THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
PRESIDENT HAYES 



JOHN W. BURGESS 




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THE ADMINISTRATION 

OF 

PRESIDENT HAYES 




(&<^M^e^rr^cl /5^ Hc^^^^ 



THE ADMINISTRATION 

OF 

PRESIDENT HAYES 



THE LARWILL LECTURES, 1915, 
DELIVERED AT KENYON COLLEaE 



• BY 

JOHN W. burgess; Ph.D., Ju.D., LL.D. 

FOEMEKLY PBOFESSOB OP POLITICAL SCIENCE AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, AND 

DEAN OF THE FACULTIES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHy 

AND PURE SCIENCE, IN COLUMBIA UNIVEB8ITT 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 






coptright, 1916, bt 
Charles Scribner's Sonb 

PubUshed April. 1916 




APR 13 1916 



^GI.A4276(53 K 



t 

V 



CONTENTS 



PAGG 



Introduction vn 

LiX;TUBK 

I. The Political, Economic, and Social Sit- 
uation IN THE Year 1876 1 

II. The Election of 1876 and the Inaugu- 
ration 37 

III. The Southern Policy and the Financial 

Policy 70 

IV. The Re-establishment of the Govern- 
ment upon Its Constitutional Founda- 
tion f Ill 



INTRODUCTION 

FOR more than a quarter of a century it 
has been my constant, growing, and 
strengthening conviction that the per- 
sonahty and administration of Rutherford B. 
Hayes, the nineteenth President of the United 
States of America, have not been duly and suf- 
ficiently estimated and appreciated by his coun- 
trymen and the world. About a dozen years 
ago I suggested this view, or rather, as I con- 
sider it, pointed out this fact, in a volume in 
the Scribner's American History Series, en- 
titled "Reconstruction and the Constitution,'* 
and I have been waiting all these years for a 
proper opportimity to amplify this opinion and 
state with some fulness the basis upon which 
it rests.^ When, therefore, in the autumn of 
1914, the invitation came to me from Doctor 
Peirce, the President of Kenyon College, the 
Alma Mater of President Hayes, to deliver, as 
the Larwill Lectures of 1915, a short course of 
lectures before the authorities and students of 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

that historic institution upon the administration 
of President Hayes, I felt that the occasion had 
at last presented itself for realizing my long- 
cherished hope, and, although I had not for 
several years undertaken so long a journey or 
assumed so serious a task, I did not hesitate to 
accept the invitation and to enter upon the 
work of preparation for the discharge of the 
duty which it involved. 

On the 25th of October, 1915, we arrived in 
Gambier, the seat of Kenyon College, a village 
of less than one thousand inhabitants, situated 
upon a ridge of about a mile in length in the 
hill-country of Ohio, at the south end of which 
is located the original building called Old Ken- 
yon and at the north end the Theological Hall, 
connected by the beautiful Scholars Walk, 
which is lined with grand forest trees, broken 
here and there with the other college buildings 
and the residences of the members of the faculty, 
a place, one could discover with a glance, for 
simple living and high thinking. 

We were entertained most hospitably and 
interestingly by President and Mrs. Peirce and 
by Bishop and Mrs. Leonard, who came from 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Cleveland to open the Bishop's residence in 
Gambier for this purpose and in order to be 
present at the lectures, and brought with them 
those stanch friends and supporters of Kenyon, 
Mr. and Mrs. David Norton. The members 
of the faculty, the students, and the people of 
the village showed their great respect for, and 
interest in, Kenyon's most celebrated alumnus 
by attending en masse the recital of his great 
contributions to the welfare of his country and 
the upbuilding of its institutions. For four 
full hours they Hstened with unflagging atten- 
tion, and with a reverence which manifested 
that they were consciously joining with the 
speaker in a service of piety due from their 
college and country to the memory of that grad- 
uate of their institution who, more than any 
other, has made it famous in the history of edu- 
cation and in the annals of public achievement. 
From Gambier we went, on invitation from 
Colonel and Mrs. Webb C. Hayes and in the 
company of President and Mrs. Peirce, to visit 
the Hayes Mansion, Museum, and Mausoleum 
at Fremont. We were met at the station by 
the friendly, big-hearted Colonel who con- 



X INTRODUCTION 

ducted us to Spiegel Grove. At the main por- 
tal of the great house stood Mrs. Hayes to wel- 
come us and extend to us the genial hospitality 
of her beautiful home, which proved to be one 
of the rarest, most interesting, and most in- 
structive experiences of our lives. The Man- 
sion is very large and commodious, filled with 
furnishings, pictures, statuary, and curios 
gathered by Colonel and Mrs. Hayes from all 
parts of the world. It is situated in a magnif- 
icent grove of huge forest trees of every de- 
scription, through which runs for over half a 
mile the old Indian trail from Lake Erie to the 
Mississippi, marked and preserved by Colonel 
Hayes with the greatest care. The Mausoleum 
and Museum are located within the same 
grounds. The Hayes Museum erected by the 
State of Ohio, to which the entire Spiegel 
Grove property has been conveyed by the 
Hayes heirs, is a noble memorial to Ohio's 
great son, and is the point of central interest 
of the domain. It contains the President's 
correspondence, note-books, diaries, and his 
splendid library of Americana, together with 
the relics and mementos of his entire public 



INTRODUCTION xi 

life, both civil and military, and of the life of 
Mrs. Hayes as mistress of the White House 
of the nation. To the Museum, therefore, we 
soon gravitated and spent within its massive 
walls the larger part of the time of our visit in 
viewing its most interesting contents. While 
there Colonel Hayes asked me for the original 
manuscript copy of the lectures which I had 
just dehvered at Gambler. Happily, I had 
taken it with me to Ohio, and it was lying at 
that moment in my trunk in the Mansion. We 
immediately composed a dedicatory page, fas- 
tened it upon the front of the manuscript and 
deposited the manuscript in the Museum, there 
to remain forever as my modest tribute to the 
man and woman whom I have long revered as 
among the noblest and the best which our 
great country has ever produced, and with 
this I felt that my pilgrimage to their shrine 
was complete. 

John W. Burgess. 

"Athbnwood," Newport, R. I., 
March 4, 1916. 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
PRESIDENT HAYES 

LECTURE I 

THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL 
SITUATION IN THE YEAR 1876. 

KENYON College has called me here to 
give a brief account of the administration 
of the national government by your fel- 
low citizen and fellow alumnus, Mr. Hayes, 
during his presidency, from 1877 to 1881. It is, 
therefore, no part of my task to delineate the 
personal character of Mr. Hayes. And yet I can- 
not help relating to you the incident of my one 
and only meeting with Mr. Hayes and with Mrs. 
Hayes — for one who ever saw them together 
could never think of speaking of them apart. 
It was in the summer of 1877, at the Fabyan 
House, in the White Mountains of New Hamp- 
shire, when Mr. Evarts, the Secretary of State, 



« THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

was conducting the President on his tour through 
New England. The guests of the Fabyan 
House, and of all the hotels near it, gathered at 
Fabyan station to see the President and, in 
Yankee fashion, to size him up. It was a very 
hot day even in the mountains, and the presi- 
dential party issued from the cars limp, travel- 
stained, and weary. Of them all only Mrs. 
Hayes seemed to have preserved vigor and vi- 
vacity. On invitation of my old friend Judge 
Horace Gray, who was of the party, I went 
into the parlor of the hotel and was introduced 
by him to the President and Mrs. Hayes, and 
the quarter of an hour of conversation which I 
was privileged to have with them was one of the 
most pleasant, profitable, and instructive of my 
whole life. I had voted for Mr. Hayes, but 
from the moment of that short interview I was 
a Hayes man, and also a Mrs. Hayes man, as 
never before. Clear, sparkling intelligence, 
sound judgment, spotless character, and charm 
are a rare combination, but fifteen minutes of 
personal contact with Mr. and Mrs. Hayes con- 
stituted an ample period in which to discover 
that one stood face to face with such a com- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 3 

bination, if never before. It was a great priv- 
ilege to have known them even thus shghtly. 

The social, political, governmental, and eco- 
nomic condition of the United States in 1876 
was very far from satisfactory. Really, it 
seemed as if the American system was in decay 
— had been tried and found wanting. The re- 
construction of the Southern States had proved 
a dismal failure and had produced an appalling 
situation. The Lincoln- Johnson scheme of re- 
construction, the so-called executive scheme, 
according to which, by executive pardon and 
amnesty, a loyal electorate should be created 
out of a part of the old electorate in the Southern 
communities, upon the basis of which loyal 
States should be reconstructed, had been con- 
demned by Congress as seating the rebel lead- 
ers in power again and as thus making the 
re-establishment of slavery, or something very 
like it, probable. Moreover, Congress had 
asserted, and rightly so, that the rebuilding 
of States of the Union within the rebellious 
districts was a legislative function, not an ex- 
ecutive, and that the Constitution had, in the 
clause conferring upon Congress the sole power 



4 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

of admitting new States into the Union, settled 
that point against the executive claim. Fol- 
lowing this principle, Congress had set aside 
the Lincoln-Johnson creations, except in the 
case of Tennessee, had thrown the Southern 
country into military districts governed by gen- 
erals of the army under martial law, and had 
finally created new States with the boundaries 
of the old ante-bellum States, except in the case 
of Virginia, upon the basis of the new negro 
citizenship and electorate provided in the Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the na- 
tional Constitution. 

While the sincerity of Congress in these mea- 
sures could not be well doubted, the result had 
been most deplorable. For the first time in 
American history, States of the Union had been 
erected upon the basis of the democracy of the 
worst, upon the basis of a kakistocracy instead 
of a democracy, and State governments were 
administered by adventurers from the North, 
chosen by the negro electorate, and supported 
by the military power of the United States. 

The corruption of government and the degra- 
dation of society resulting from such a situation 



PRESIDENT HAYES 5 

were indescribably appalling. Those naturally 
fitted for tilling the fields and doing the menial 
work of life, and only that, were artificially 
placed in part in the positions of legislators, ad- 
ministrators, teachers, politicians, and iiL part 
formed the proletariat of heelers sustaining these 
pseudo-leaders in power and receiving from 
them such portion of the public plunder as 
would maintain a miserable loafing existence; 
while the natural leaders, disfranchised, poverty- 
stricken, discouraged by defeat, and dispirited 
by their subjection to barbarism, robbery, and 
vulgarity, sat confused, benumbed, and hopeless 
around their ruined firesides. The political so- 
ciety was turned upside down, and government 
was debased into a means of revenge, theft, and 
debauchery. Taxes and debt were heaped upon 
these unhappy communities until they became 
tantamount to confiscation, and the proceeds 
from them could hardly be said to have been 
expended at all. They were simply stolen. 

Then came the movement of the white men of 
the South to free themselves, through secret or- 
ganization and the employment of intimidation 
and violence, from the unbearable and shameful 



6 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

condition, a movement which was, for a time 
at least, productive of almost as much demorali- 
zation as the negro-carpetbag-military domina- 
tion which it aimed to supplant. The so-called 
Ku-Klux conspiracy against the existing order 
of things was by no means unnatural or unprec- 
edented. Whenever and wherever a tyranny, 
such as that established in the South by negro- 
carpetbag-military rule, has existed, a tyranny 
which cannot be shaken by regular means, re- 
sort to secret and unlawful movements has al- 
most always been had. The trouble is that 
such movements do not stop with the over- 
throw of the tyranny against which they are 
directed, but those engaged in them use their 
triumph for the revenge of the grievances they 
have suffered, and then for the establishment of 
a new tyranny almost, if not fully, as galling 
over their former rulers. Moreover, the neces- 
sarily reckless and unconscionable means em- 
ployed destroy conscience, character, and self- 
respect in those who practise them. The pur- 
poses of the Ku-Klux movement and kindred 
movements were to suppress the negro vote, 
to frighten the negroes from the eommission 



PRESIDENT HAYES 7 

of crime, and to keep them in their place 
and make them work. This was all necessary 
for the rescue of civilization from the decay 
which threatened to consume it, but the con- 
sciousness that the methods employed were, 
from a legal point of view, wrongful demoral- 
ized those employing them, and kept alive the 
apprehension in their minds that, at any mo- 
ment, what had been won might be again taken 
from them by the military power of the national 
government. In other words, they themselves 
became inoculated with the terror with which 
they had conquered the negro, and this bred 
increasing hatred of the national government 
and increasing oppression of the negro. 

It must be also kept in mind that three of 
the newly established Southern States had not, 
in 1876, escaped by the employment of these 
means, or in any other way, from the ne- 
gro-carpetbag-military domination, viz.: South 
Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. So long as 
such domination remained in these it was more 
likely, as it was felt, to be restored elsewhere, 
and even though it might not be, it still kept 
the abomination ever present in the minds of 



8 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the people of the South. It seemed to me, a 
son of the South, but a resident of the North, 
that the feehng between the North and the 
South, or rather the feehng of the South against 
the North, was more bitter in the year 1876 
than in the year 1866. The great problem of 
preserving the fruits of the victory in the war, 
and at the same time reconciling the vanquished 
to their lot, was still to be solved. In fact, it 
looked as if a new revolt might break out at 
any moment. 

Moreover, the course of reconstruction had 
been no less demoralizing upon the internal 
structure of the national government than upon 
the relations of the political society. In the 
first place, it had bred in Congress a new spirit 
of ruthless domination. This was manifest not 
only in the rigor of the laws passed by it im- 
posing poUtical and civil equahty, especially 
upon the Southern society, and in many respects 
social equality, as in the use of schools, public 
conveyances, hotels, inns, theatres, etc., but also 
in the supremacy asserted by it over the execu- 
tive power and in the control of both the 
civil and military service in the administration. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 9 

The struggle began, as we have seen, between 
President Johnson and Congress over the method 
of the reconstruction of States in the South, 
but did not end with the Congress's victory in 
this matter. It went much further, both while 
the Repubhcan party still held the majority in 
both houses of Congress, and also after the 
Democratic party had secured the control of 
the House of Representatives by the elections 
of 1874. 

During Johnson's term, it manifested itself 
chiefly by overcoming the President's veto upon 
legislation, and by the adoption, in the Tenure 
of OflBce Acts, of the principle that all ofl&cers 
appointed by and with the advice and consent 
of the Senate could be dismissed only with the 
consent of the Senate. It was certainly the 
constitutional right of the houses of Congress 
to overcome the President's objection to legis- 
lative projects passed by them, whenever they 
could unite two-thirds of the members voting 
in each house, a majority being present in 
each, against the President's veto. The Presi- 
dent did not dispute this, but his contention 
upon this point was that the houses, by refus- 



10 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

ing to admit members from the States recon- 
structed by him, had been able to command 
a majority against his vetoes, which they could 
not have done had all the persons lawfully 
elected been admitted to seats. The President 
substantially claimed that Congress was a rump 
parliament, although he did not express his con- 
tention exactly in these words. He did, how- 
ever, contend that the Tenure of Office Acts 
were unconstitutional, since, although the Con- 
stitution was silent in regard to dismissal from 
oflSce, the exclusive responsibility of the Presi- 
dent for the execution of the laws made it nec- 
essary that he should exercise the power of 
dismissal at his own discretion, and that such 
had been the usage of the government from the 
beginning. In this he was entirely right, and 
the triumph of Congress over him upon this 
most important subject introduced a demoral- 
ization into the civil and military service which 
spread rapidly in all directions. 

Congress was, however, not even satisfied with 
this. It now assumed to limit the military 
power of the President by incorporating into 
the Army Appropriation Bill of the year 1867 



PRESIDENT HAYES 11 

provisions fixing the residence of the command- 
ing general of the army at Washington, pro- 
tecting him from being assigned elsewhere except 
at his own request, requiring the President or 
Secretary of War to issue all orders and instruc- 
tions relating to military operations through 
him, making all orders and instructions issued 
in any other way null and void, and requiring 
the infliction of punishment upon any officer dis- 
obeying this regulation. It is true that the Presi- 
dent approved the Bill, including these provi- 
sions, in order to save the appropriation for the 
army, but they, nevertheless, meant the curtail- 
ment of the constitutional powers of the execu- 
tive by an altogether unconstitutional legislative 
encroachment, and that, too, at the most vital 
point, viz.: the function of commandership-in- 
chief of the armed forces. 

This control now assumed by Congress over 
the civil and military service advanced rapidly 
towards its logical results. These results were 
of two general kinds. The first was the over- 
turning of the check-and-balance system of gov- 
ernment provided in the Constitution, and the 
substitution of the parliamentary system for it. 



12 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

The Tenure of OflSce Acts provided, among 
other things, that the members of the Cabinet 
should hold their offices during the term of the 
President appointing them, and for one month 
after, unless sooner removed by and with the 
consent of the Senate. Inasmuch as the Senate 
now claimed also a real discretionary power in 
the ratification of the appointments to the Cab- 
inet, the Tenure of Office Acts made the Cabinet 
something more like the ministry in parliamen- 
tary government than an informal body of the 
heads of departments subject entirely to the 
President's commands, which was its constitu- 
tional character. 

The struggle of Stanton to hold on to the 
secretaryship of war by the support of Con- 
gress, but against the will of the President, 
threatened for a time to completely subordinate 
the executive to the legislature. The move- 
ment culminated in the attempt to remove the 
President from office by impeachment. Had 
this succeeded, and it came dangerously near 
to it, the check-and-balance system provided by 
the Constitution, the American system of inde- 
pendent and co-ordinate departments in gov- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 13 

eminent, would have been completely set aside, 
and Congress would have changed the Cabinet 
into a ministry, subject to the will of the Con- 
gressional majority in the administration of the 
government. As it was. President Johnson 
never recovered thereafter the exercise of the 
full constitutional powers of the executive. He 
went out of office with the distinct knowledge 
that the constitutional position of the executive 
had been degraded through the arbitrary tyranny 
exercised over it by the extraordinary Repub- 
lican majority in Congress, bent upon robbing 
him of all power to limit their control over the 
administration. Naturally, upon the accession 
of President Grant, Congress modified some- 
what its attitude towards the executive, and the 
diminishing Republican majority in Congress 
ultimately deprived the dominant party of the 
strength to carry out its policy of parliamentary 
control over the administration. Nevertheless 
the precedents established during the term of 
President Johnson exerted a baleful influence 
during the entire eight years of the presidency 
of General Grant. 
It was, however, in the other direction, in the 



14 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

control of the tenure of the officials, both as to 
its origin and termination, that the sway of 
Congress, or rather of the members of Congress, 
developed during the presidency of General 
Grant into most harmful and corrupting pro- 
portions. President Grant was a poor judge of 
men except only as to military qualifications. 
He made strong friendships upon insufficient 
grounds. He was loyal to his friends. And he 
was trustful of the honesty and purposes of those 
to whom he had given his confidence. He was 
just the character to be played upon by design- 
ing politicians. His experiences in opposition 
to President Johnson had betrayed him into the 
hands of the Republican Stalwarts, and had 
made him amenable to their methods. The 
scheme of party organization which the Repub- 
licans had worked out with the purpose of main- 
taining the permanent supremacy of the party 
was ingenious and not altogether artificial. It 
was quite impossible for the President to deter- 
mine from his own personal acquaintance how to 
fill properly the thousands and tens of thousands 
of offices under his power of appointment, and 
it was an unwritten usage that the federal offi- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 15 

cers should be taken from the respective locali- 
ties in which they might serve. It was natural, 
therefore, that the President should turn to his 
party adherents in Congress, not as a body, but 
separately, to suggest to him proper persons to 
fill the federal offices within their respective 
localities. It is also comprehensible how the 
members of Congress should gradually come to 
regard their solicited advice hy and to the Presi- 
dent as obligatory on the President, and finally 
to regard the solicitation of such advice by the 
President as a right of theirs to he consulted, a 
right attaching to their positions. The Con- 
gress had the power to make good these claims 
of its separate members through its power to 
reduce to a minimum the offices filled without 
the advice and consent of the Senate, and 
through the power of the Senate to reject nomi- 
nations made to it by the President not recom- 
mended by the respective Congressional mem- 
bers entitled, in the view of the party majority 
in the Senate, to be consulted in such nomina- 
tions. 

By 1870 the system of appointment to the 
federal offices had reached a development which 



16 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

may be roughly stated as follows : The senators 
from each State, if they happened to be of the 
same party with the President, and could agree 
between themselves, furnished the President 
with the names of the persons to be nominated 
to the Senate by the President for the higher 
federal offices within the State. If they could 
not agree in each and every case, a rough sort 
of distribution was made between them by the 
President. If only one of the two senators was 
of the same party with the President, then the 
entire patronage of the higher federal offices 
within his State fell to him. To each member 
of the House of Representatives, of the same 
party with the President, fell the patronage of 
the lower federal offices within his Congressional 
district. In case of the representation of the 
district by a member not of the same party with 
the President, the patronage of the lower federal 
offices within that district fell to the represen- 
tatives from other districts of the State in which 
that district lay, who might be of the same 
party with the President. In case there should 
be no representative from a particular State of 
the same political party with the President, then 



PRESIDENT HAYES 17 

the patronage of the lower federal offices within 
that State fell to the senators or senator from 
that State, provided they or one of them might 
be of the same party with the President. The 
President's independent power of nomination 
was thus reduced to the federal offices within 
States not represented in either house of Con- 
gress by members of the same political party 
with himself. The senators had even come to 
the point of considering that they should be con- 
sulted in the selection by the President of the 
members of his Cabinet. 

This body of federal office-holders had now 
also become the leading personahties in the 
party organization. They dominated and con- 
trolled and officered the caucuses and the local, 
State, and national conventions of the party. 
They spent about as much time and energy in 
managing the party organization and its affairs 
as in administering the duties of their offices. 
In fact, the names of many persons were car- 
ried on the official pay-rolls who did nothing 
except manage the affairs of the party. It 
must be, also, kept in mind that at this period 
of our history party organization and manage- 



18 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

' ment had not been subjected to law. It was at 
that time regarded as a principle of American 
liberty that it should not be. It was considered 
that this was a realm of free action. All men 
of voting age and capacity, it was argued, had 
the same right of political organization, and if 
they failed to make use of it, it was their own 
fault, and that the best way to bring them to a 
sense of their negligence was to let them suffer 
the consequences of their negligence. The party 
managers fixed thus the time of meeting, the 
place of meeting, and the procedure of the cau- 
cuses and conventions, and made the common 
voters simply heelers. The vicious circle was 
thus completed. The congressmen appointed 
the federal officers, and fixed and voted their 
pay, and the federal officers, through their con- 
trol of the party, elected the congressmen and 
kept them in position. The federal officers col- 
lected the party funds by a system of assess- 
ment among themselves and of sohcitation from 
the voters, or certain of the voters, and these 
contributors came in usually for some sort of a 
reward, either in the form of office, or conces- 
sion, or rake-off. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 19 

In order to prevent dissension within the 
party and to assign to each worker his duty and 
reward, some one person was advanced, through 
a sort of process of natural selection, to the 
position of party leadership in the different dis- 
tricts and States. This was the boss, the cap- 
stone of party organization, in the decade pre- 
ceding 1876. 

So soon as General Grant succeeded to the 
presidency he began to feel the cramp of the 
situation and to rebel against it. He secured a 
modification of the Tenure of Office Acts, which 
gave him a little freer hand, and in his annual 
message of December, 1870, he recommended a 
reform of the civil service. President Grant 
designated the existing system as "an abuse of 
long standing," and declared that he wished a 
reform applicable not only to subordinate offices, 
but one which should "govern the manner of 
making all appointments." He wished not only 
to remove the relation of the congressmen to 
the officers of the administration, but also to 
relieve himseK and his heads of departments 
from an intolerable burden. 

Under pressure from the President, Congress 



20 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

passed the Act of 1871, authorizing the Presi- 
dent to estabhsh a civil-service commission, 
and making an appropriation for its expenses. 
The President lost no time in the appointment 
of the members of the commission, and they 
lost no time in setting up a system of competi- 
tive examinations for the offices. Almost im- 
mediately the character of the public service 
began to improve, too rapidly to suit the con- 
gressmen, who saw their patronage and the 
means of controlling the nominations and elec- 
tions slipping away from them. By 1874 the 
Congressional revolt against the new system was 
strong enough to refuse the annual appropria- 
tion to defray the expenses of the commission, 
and before the end of President Grant's second 
term the official service was back in the old ruts 
of 1870. Inefficiency, graft, and corruption 
crept in everywhere and brought scandal upon 
the administration from top to bottom. Even 
the Secretary of War fell under such strong sus- 
picion that he was obliged to resign in great 
haste his high office in order to escape impeach- 
ment by the House of Representatives, which by 
the elections of 1874 had fallen into the hands of 



PRESIDENT HAYES 21 

the Democrats. Star Route, Credit Mobilier, 
and the Whiskey Ring are terms which will 
always be connected in our history with the 
venality, or at least the generally believed 
venality, of the Republican party and the Re- 
pubhcan administration in the year 1876. 

The economic and financial systems of the 
country had fallen into no less confusion and 
viciousness. The long war and the spirit of ad- 
venture developed by it had produced an era 
of reckless speculation. This was encouraged 
by the existence of opportunities for its indul- 
gence never before at hand. These opportuni- 
ties consisted, first, in the railway situation and 
extension; secondly, in the land-grabbing game; 
thirdly, in the discovery of the mining wealth of 
the Rockies; and, fourthly, in the condition of 
the pubhc debt and the currency. 

In the first place, the distinction was still to 
be made in our law between pubHc-service cor- 
porations and purely private corporations, and 
the system of governmental control of the 
former was still to be worked out. As a rule, 
charters were granted to favored persons, and 
they were left to their own devices as to how 



22 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

they might exploit the rights and privileges 
granted in them to their own private advantage 
without any regard to the primary interests of 
the public. They were allowed to float stocks 
and bonds at will, and in many cases the bonds 
of municipalities and States, and in one noted 
case the bonds of the United States, were given 
to them either outright or under a method of 
loan, which amounted to nearly the same thing. 
Vast areas of public land along their routes were 
also given to them. The natural and inevitable 
results of all this were the overbuilding of rail- 
roads, the inflation of the capital invested in 
them by the overissue of stocks and bonds, 
the management of the roads for the purely 
private enrichment of the managers, discrim- 
ination in rates between places and between 
shippers, declaration of dividends without re- 
gard to earnings, wild and artificial speculation 
in the stocks so manipulated, and certain loss 
or even bankruptcy in the end. 

The opening up of the public lands to private 
occupation on a scale never before experienced 
and the placing of mines by the discoverers of 
the mineral wealth of the new country were 



PRESIDENT HAYES 23 

things no less conducive to reckless speculation 
than the railroad situation. Everybody was 
grabbing the public land under every possible 
subterfuge, and even boasting of his shrewd- 
ness in outwitting government and law in doing 
so, while the exchanges were glutted with the 
shares of mining stocks, many of them worth- 
less and some of them simply bogus. The get- 
rich-quick bacillus had entered every man's 
blood, and had poisoned the brain and de- 
stroyed the conscience of all too many. 

To all this as universal incentive came the 
monetary situation, the debt and the currency 
problems. The war had left a debt upon the 
United States Government alone, to say nothing 
of the States and municipalities, of nearly three 
thousand millions of dollars, and an irredeema- 
ble paper currency of over four hundred millions 
of dollars. President Johnson's Secretary of the 
Treasury, Mr. Hugh M'CuUoch, was a sound 
financier, and he strove earnestly and success- 
fully to reduce the debt and the volume of the 
paper currency, but Congress stopped his work 
as to the latter by the law of 1868, and fixed the 
volume of the greenbacks, as this currency was 



24 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

called, at three hundred and fifty -six millions of 
dollars, and made no provision for its redemp- 
tion. Down to 1870, it was still an open ques- 
tion whether the Supreme Court would hold the 
legal-tender quality ascribed by Congress to 
these notes to be in accordance with the Consti- 
tution. In that year the Court pronounced 
against it, and then in another case, after the 
addition of two members known to be favorable 
to the greenbacks, it reversed its decision and 
fastened upon our monetary system a legal- 
tender paper currency which contained no pro- 
vision for its present or future redemption in 
coin. These performances of the Supreme Court, 
and these acts of the administration in so chang- 
ing its membership as to bring them about, pro- 
duced a judicial scandal, which increased, most 
harmfully, the confusion of the age in regard to 
the standards of morality and law. The final 
decision of the Court was a great encouragement 
to the party which favored the expansion of the 
greenback currency to any degree which, in the 
judgment of the government, the business of the 
country might require, and the payment of all 
public, as well as private, debts in such cur- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 25 

rency, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in 
the evidence of the debt itself or in the law under 
which it had been created. 

The situation favored and increased, also, spec- 
ulation in the coin metals, making prices of 
commodities not only high, but uncertain and 
irregular. And to all this came now the silver 
question, or the question of the relation between 
gold and silver as the coin basis of our monetary 
system. After 1853, and down to 1873, the fact 
that, under the legal ratio between gold and silver 
coin, the gold dollar was worth less than the sil- 
ver dollar had driven the silver dollar out of cir- 
culation and had made the gold dollar the stand- 
ard of our money. By the act of Congress of 
1873, it was ordered that no more silver dollars 
should be minted for our domestic use, but that 
a silver dollar containing more grains of the 
metal should be coined for our foreign trade. 
By this time, however, the discoveries of the 
new silver mines in the Rockies were depreciat- 
ing, by greatly increased supply, the value of 
silver as compared with gold, and the demon- 
etization of silver by one of the great European 
states worked at the same time in the same di- 



26 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

rection. It was stipulated in the larger part of 
our bonded indebtedness that both principal and 
interest were payable in coin. Disregarding the 
fact that coin had, since 1853, meant practically 
gold, a very large party now rapidly formed itself 
which demanded the free coinage of silver as 
legal-tender money at the existing legal ratio be- 
tween it and gold, and the payment of all our 
indebtedness requiring coin payment with such 
coin. It was argued by both the greenback and 
free-silver adherents that in no part of our 
bonded indebtedness was there any mention of 
gold, but of coin, and that silver was lawful coin 
at the time of the creation of the debt, and had 
always been coin in the United States down to 
1873, when it had been demonetized in the un- 
just interest of the creditor class. They claimed 
that the United States would not only fulfil 
every legal and moral obligation by paying its 
stipulated coin debt in silver, but was bound 
to do so in the interest of our own people, be- 
cause the great mass of our people belonged to 
the debtor class. They pointed out that the 
laborer and the salaried man, who constituted 
the vast majority of the people, received their 



PRESIDENT HAYES «7 

pay in greenbacks, while the bondholder received 
his interest in gold coin, and they demanded 
that there should be one and the same currency 
for the laborer and the bondholder, and de- 
manded it in the name of justice and humanity. 
The free coinage of silver legal-tender money, 
at the legal ratio between silver and gold pre- 
vailing in 1873, it was declared, would bring 
about this result and at the same time redeem 
our pledges of coin indebtedness, and it was 
maintained that our right to pay our indebted- 
ness in silver coin would not have been ques- 
tioned except for the monstrous and iniquitous 
measure of 1873 demonetizing silver. 

This reasoning and these representations were 
so universally embraced by the masses that they 
produced a veritable craze. Any man who did 
not accept them was denounced as inhuman as 
well as immoral, as the defender of the rich 
against the poor, as the upholder of plutocracy 
against democracy. The Republican party was 
accused, and not without reason, of favoring 
privilege. In 1874 it still held control of both 
houses of Congress, while the elections of 1874 
gave the House of Representatives in the next 



28 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Congress, by large majority, to the Democrats. 
The RepubHcans now hurried through Con- 
gress the famous resumption of specie pay- 
ments measure at the beginning of the year 
1875. This meant the redemption of the paper 
currency in coin, on presentation at the United 
States Treasury after a given time, viz.: Jan- 
uary 1, 1879. It did not thus affect the silver 
question, but only the paper-money question, 
and Mr. Bland was preparing his noted Free 
Silver Bill at almost the same moment. This 
Bland Bill was passed by the succeeding Demo- 
cratic house by an overwhelming majority, 
and fairly reflected the views and wishes of a 
vast majority of the people of the country. 
Add to all this the fact that the situation, polit- 
ical and economic, of the country had produced 
the great monetary panic of 1873, and the hard 
times of the years immediately following, with 
so great a depression in the labor market as to 
cause great suffering and unrest, and you have 
sufficient grounds for claiming that in the minds 
of the great mass of the people the time had 
come for some radical change in the ordering of 
our affairs, since otherwise we should find our- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 29 

selves entering upon the road of national de- 
cline. 

In eras of institutional collapse the demand is 
always felt for the leadership of a great person- 
ality. The leadership of such a personality is 
the only way of escape from institutional de- 
cadence, followed by social decadence. In the 
year 1876 the instinct of the American people 
and of their leaders went out in search of such 
a personaHty, and when that instinct is thor- 
oughly aroused and terribly in earnest, it is 
usually unerring. 

The galaxy of prominent men from whom to 
choose was never fuller. There was the great 
soldier, the popular hero, who had already ad- 
ministered the government for eight years. But 
his success as a civil officer had not at all 
equalled that as a military leader. His choice 
for a third time would conflict with the Amer- 
ican principle against perpetual service. And, 
finally, his own private character had not en- 
tirely escaped the scandal which had borne down 
so many of his subordinates. It was clear that 
General Grant was not the man whom the ne- 
cessities of the hour demanded. 



30 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Then there was the sturdy, judicious, pru- 
dent Secretary of State, Mr. Fish, who had man- 
aged our foreign affairs with such abihty, adroit- 
ness, firmness, and success throughout a critical 
period. He was upright and courteous as a 
man, and without a blemish upon his official 
character, and, besides his experience in the 
great diplomatic office, he had made an excellent 
governor of the great State of New York. But 
he was now too old to undertake the strain of 
the presidential office, too much identified with 
Grantism, as it was called, and too rich and 
aristocratic to understand the feelings, suffer- 
ings, and aspirations of the masses. 

Then there was the brilliant, jovial, popular 
Blaine of Maine, the hail-fellow-well-met in poh- 
tics as in everything else, the Henry Clay of his 
generation, idolized by his friends and hated by 
his foes. But he had had no administrative 
experience save of a quasi sort as speaker of the 
House of Representatives . He had been smirched 
in the Credit Mobilier matter. And he, too, was 
thought to be alhed with the "interests." 

Then there was the arrogant and autocratic 
Conkling, master of sarcasm and invective, 



PRESIDENT HAYES 31 

shrewd wire-puller and politician, feared by 
many and loved by few, the right-hand man of 
President Grant in Congress, probably unap- 
proachable with money, but entirely uncon- 
scionable in the employment of the bribe of 
office for the maintenance of party organization. 
His qualifications for the presidency were not 
such that they need now to have any disquali- 
fications set off against them. 

Then there was Morton, the great war gov- 
ernor of Indiana, a tried and proved politician 
and administrator, undoubted patriot, and above 
all suspicion as to financial honesty, one of the 
chief founders and supporters of the Republican 
party. But there were rumors about dissolute- 
ness in private life, and it was evident that he 
was failing physically. 

Then there was Bristow, Grant's Secretary of 
the Treasury, who had made himself noted in the 
prosecution of the Whiskey Ring, and who was 
regarded as the one real reformer of the Grant 
administration. But he was comparatively a 
new man, and he came from a State south of 
the Ohio. He had not been sufficiently tried and 
tested for the great place at this critical juncture. 



32 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Then there were Hartranft, the soldier-gov- 
ernor of the great State of Pennsylvania, and 
the genial Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut, and 
the wise political manager and compromiser of 
differences, W. H. Wheeler, of New York, to all 
of whom failed, in some point or other, the full- 
rounded life, experience, character, acquire- 
ments, and reputation which the exigencies of 
the period and the critical state of affairs de- 
manded. 

But happily for the country, and I may say 
for the world, there was such a man, and, as had 
happened before in the history of our country, 
he hailed from Ohio, the State of great leaders 
both in war and in peace. He was a native- 
born son of Ohio, of the sturdy Scotch-New 
England stock; an orphan from birth on the 
father's side, and to his mother, therefore, not 
only a devoted son but a helper and guide; a 
dutiful and affectionate nephew of the best uncle 
who ever lived; a loving brother; the model 
husband of a noble woman, whom he himself 
designated as "the incarnation of the golden 
rule," and the fond and anxious father of a 
household of children, all of whom have, in their 



PRESIDENT HAYES 33 

Kves and services, rewarded his paternal care; 
a thoughtful, considerate, and helpful neighbor; 
a patriotic, zealous, and generous fellow citizen, 
and a Christian gentleman of blameless life, 
courteous manners, and universal sympathy. 
Here was that broad foundation of personal and 
domestic virtue, of old-fashioned, genuine worth, 
upon which to build public character, intellec- 
tual and moral, of the finest fibre, strength, and 
firmness. And he had built it continuously, 
expansively, and successfully. In college he 
was, I need not tell you, the valedictorian of his 
class, great especially in logic, philosophy, and 
mathematics and in oratory and debate — the 
sterhng things, not the softs — always seeking to 
conquer the difficult and avoiding the effect of 
the easy. In the law school he was, on account 
of his mastery of the knotty points and his 
philosophic view of the whole domain of juris- 
prudence, a favorite pupil of Story and Green- 
leaf, and the like. As legal adviser of the gov- 
ernment of a large and growing city he had 
labored always with assiduity and success to 
prevent graft, check extravagance, maintain 
harmony of action, and promote municipal wel- 



34 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

fare. As a member of Congress, although for 
only a short time, he displayed legislative ability 
and tact, and acquired the necessary law- 
maker's view-point of pubhc questions. But it 
was as an administrator in war and peace that 
he had manifested his greatest ability and re- 
ceived his most valuable experience and edu- 
cation for the great office which destiny held in 
store for him. As a brave and efficient soldier 
throughout the entire Civil War, beginning as 
major of his regiment and mounting to the posi- 
tion of a general of division, he learned both 
how to obey and command, how to suffer and 
grow strong, how to put duty and country above 
life and self. And finally as three times governor 
of this great State of statesmen, he schooled him- 
self in the work of civil administration upon a 
large and exacting scale for the executive lead- 
ership of the nation. In all his public acts and 
utterances, while a stanch Republican from 
the foundation of the party, he had never lost 
his balance, had never been touched by any of 
its excesses or its errors, but had always stood 
upon its fundamental principles and had known 
how to apply them correctly to the details of 



PRESIDENT HAYES 35 

political and economic life. He upheld loyally 
the amendments to the Constitution won by 
the nation's victory in arms, but his manly 
sympathy for the suffering South was well 
known. He was also of national reputation as 
the invincible foe of all graft and corruption in 
politics, and all heresies in economy and finance. 
He had beaten on the hustings and at the polls 
the three most popular Democrats of Ohio be- 
cause of their unsoundness on the monetary 
question. If any man in the United States 
could at that time be called the leader in the 
struggle for civil-service reform, honorable pubhc 
finance, and sound money, it was he. Many 
of the best men of the country were well ac- 
quainted with these facts, and had marked 
him as the coming man. 

When the national convention of the Repub- 
lican party assembled in June of 1876 at Cin- 
cinnati the seriousness of the situation was 
thoroughly realized, and the determination to 
meet it successfully possessed every mind. 
This was not so clearly manifested in the plat- 
form, but when it came to the nominations, the 
body threw aside one after another of the candi- 



36 PRESIDENT HAYES 

dates, Blaine, Morton, Conkling, Bristow, and 
the rest, and gravitated surely and continuously, 
as if driven by a higher power, to the right man, 
the man who by force of his upright character, 
unblemished reputation, inteUigent and sound 
public views, judicious management and firm 
will was called by more than human appoint- 
ment to lead the Republican party out of its 
devious ways into a new path of victory, use- 
fulness, and continued supremacy, the noblest 
son of this noble institution, the valedictorian 
of its class of 1842, the governor of the great 
State of Ohio, Rutherford Birchard Hayes. 



LECTURE II 

THE ELECTION OF 1876 AND THE 
INAUGURATION 

THE law of election of the President of 
the United States was, in 1876, and still 
is, a very compHcated matter, and un- 
derstood with exactness by very few persons. 
It is composed of two elements, the one is State 
law, and the other United States law. The State 
law controls exclusively the election of the elec- 
tors of the President, and the United States law 
controls exclusively the election of the President 
by the electors, but both the State law and the 
United States law are contained in, or based on, 
the provisions of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

The power of the State to select the electors 
is vested in it expressly by the Constitution of 
the United States. The language of the vest- 
ing clause is as follows: "Each State shall ap- 
point, in such manner as the legislature thereof 

37 



38 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

may direct, a number of electors, equal to the 
whole number of senators and representatives 
to which the State may be entitled in the Con- 
gress." The power of the State as to the man- 
ner of selecting the electors is thus vested by the 
Constitution of the United States in the legis- 
lature of that State, and there is, therefore, no 
power in the State to limit or control its legis- 
lature in the slightest degree in regard to that 
matter, or to order the manner of selecting the 
electors to be fixed by any other body. Even 
an article of the State constitution directing 
otherwise would be of no force or effect what- 
soever. The Constitution of the United States 
itself lays only one limitation on the power of 
the State legislature to control absolutely and 
exclusively the manner of selecting the electors, 
and that is a disqualification of any member of 
Congress, or any holder of a United States office 
of trust or profit, from being appointed an elec- 
tor, and that is not a limitation of the manner 
of the election, but as to the qualification of the 
electors. Under this power, vested by the Con- 
stitution of the United States in the legislature 
of each State, the legislature may appoint the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 39 

electors itself, or designate the body which shall 
appoint or elect them, and shall determine how 
that selection shall be effected and determined. 
It is, therefore, possible to have as many ways 
of selecting the presidential electors as there are 
State legislatures. In fact, down to the out- 
break of the Civil War, the selection of the 
presidential electors in all the States had not 
been uniform, not even as to the body selecting 
the electors. At the time of the election of 
1876, the practice of electing the electors by the 
voters had become uniform in all the States, but 
not the method of determining how the choice 
should be exercised by the voters nor how the 
choice should be declared. For example, in the 
States upon which the election of 1876 turned, 
viz.: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and 
Oregon, the State law was not uniform. In 
the first three States, the respective legislatures 
had created canvassing boards, and vested in 
them not only the power to count and declare 
the result of the vote, but also the power to 
throw out the returns from voting precincts in 
which, according to the belief of the said board, 
there had been fraud, violence, or intimidation. 



40 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

actual or threatened. On the other hand, the 
legislature of the State of Oregon had made the 
Secretary of State of the State the ultimate can- 
vassing officer, with the power to declare the 
result of the vote, but had not vested in him 
the power to throw out the returns from any 
precinct for any reason. 

To whom the declaration of the result of the 
vote for the electors should be made and who 
should give the official certification to the per- 
sons chosen were points not included in the 
power vested by the Constitution of the United 
States in the State legislatures. These were, 
therefore, points to be fixed by United States 
law, and as the constitutional law of the United 
States did, and does, not fix them in detail, it had 
to be done by a Congressional act. The then ex- 
isting Congressional act (U. S. Revised Statutes, 
Sees. 137-140) designated the governor of each 
State as the person to whom the ultimate State 
canvassing officer, or board, should make decla- 
ration of the result of the election of the presi- 
dential electors, and laid upon the governor the 
duty of issuing his certificate of their election to 
the electors, and upon the electors the duty of 



PRESIDENT HAYES 41 

enclosing this certificate of their election with 
the report of the votes given by them for Presi- 
dent and Vice-President to the president of the 
Senate of the United States. Back to this point, 
then, the national body vested by the Constitu- 
tion with the power of counting the vote of the 
electors for President and Vice-President might 
go, but no further. That is, this body could, 
according to a sound interpretation of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, go behind the 
governor's certificate in determining who the 
true presidential electors from the particular 
State might be, but not behind the report of the 
State canvassing ofiicer, or board, to the gov- 
ernor. The governor, in giving his certificate 
to the electors attesting their choice, was acting 
under United States law, and his act could, 
therefore, be inquired into by the national or- 
gan for counting the vote of the electors. The 
State canvassing boards or officers were, on the 
other hand, acting under State law, and their 
reports must be received with the effect pre- 
scribed by the respective State legislatures, as 
provided by the Constitution of the United 
States itself. Any sound constitutional lawyer 



42 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

could have had no doubt upon that point, even 
before the elucidating discussions of the winter 
of 1876-7. 

What the national organ was for determining 
who, in case of conflicting returns, were the true 
presidential electors chosen in each State, and 
for counting their votes for President and Vice- 
President, was not so clear. The national Con- 
stitution simply provided that the electors 
chosen in each State should sign, certify, and 
transmit sealed to the president of the national 
Senate the lists of their votes for President and 
Vice-President, and that the president of the 
Senate should, in the presence of the Senate 
and the House of Representatives, open these 
documents, and that the votes should then be 
counted. Down to 1876 the president of the 
Senate had, through tellers appointed for the 
purpose, cast up the reports from the electoral 
colleges in the different States, and announced 
the result, for although there had been instances 
of conflicting returns, they were not suflScient 
to affect the result, however counted, and no ne- 
cessity had, therefore, been felt for determining 
which were the correct returns, or for deciding 



PRESIDENT HAYES 43 

what organ was vested by the Constitution with 
the power of determining which were the correct 
returns. Since the election of 1864 there had 
existed a rule adopted by each house of Con- 
gress for itself, called the twenty-second joint 
rule, according to which no electoral vote could 
be counted from any State, if either house of 
Congress should vote to reject it. This was, 
of course, a very crude solution of the question, 
as it gave the House of Representatives the 
power to defeat an election by the electors, and 
then alone elect the President and Vice-President 
itself, as provided by the Constitution in case 
of the failure of the electors to make the choice. 
Consequently the Senate, which was in 1876 
Republican, while the House was Democratic, 
had given notice before the count of the vote of 
the election of that year came on that it would 
not renew the rule. 

The situation, then, was as follows: It was 
known that there would be conflicting returns 
from at least four States, and that the election 
would turn on the decision in regard to them; 
that the Senate would not acquiesce in the prop- 
osition that the House of Representatives alone 



44 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

could reject the returns of the electoral vote 
from any State; that the president of the Sen- 
ate was a Repubhcan, and might claim to de- 
termine, in case of conflicting returns, which set 
of returns from any State was to be counted; 
and that the outgoing President, being a Repub- 
lican, would probably exercise all the powers 
vested in him by the Constitution to seat the 
candidate of his party as his successor. The 
Democrats asserted stoutly that they had won 
the election, but they did not feel at all sure 
that, as things stood, their candidates would be 
counted in. They were, therefore, quite willing 
to join in the passage of an act for counting the 
vote, which they thought would commit the 
Republicans, and could hardly fail to give them, 
the Democrats, the presidency. In fact, it 
must be said that they were the chief authors 
of the act, since it was their votes which carried 
it through. 

This statute was the noted Electoral Commis- 
sion Act of January 29, 1877. It provided that a 
commission of fifteen persons should be selected : 
five from and by the Senate, five from and by 
the House of Representatives, and five from the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 45 

Supreme Court, the justices of the first, third, 
eighth, and ninth circuits being designated by 
the act and authorized to select the fifth justice 
from among the other members of the Court; 
that where only one set of returns appeared 
from a State, the votes so given must be counted 
unless otherwise ordered by the concurrent ac- 
tion of both houses of Congress; that where 
conflicting returns appeared from any State, the 
same should be referred to the Commission, and 
the votes contained in the set of returns, de- 
cided by the Commission to be the true returns, 
should be counted, unless otherwise ordered by 
the concurrent action of both houses of Con- 
gress; and that all constitutional or legal rights 
of a judicial nature, if any, to question the 
title of any one thus declared elected President 

or Vice-President of the United States were 
reserved. 

The principle of this statute was that the 
power to count the electoral votes from the 
States for President and Vice-President belonged 
to the two houses of Congress jointly, and exer- 
cising equal weight, and the difficulty overcome 
by the Electoral Commission contrivance was 



46 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the difficulty of two bodies exercising equal 
weight arriving at a conclusion. 

The Democrats needed to obtain only one 
electoral vote from the four States presenting 
conflicting returns to elect their candidates. 
The Republicans, therefore, must obtain every 
electoral vote from all four of these States in 
order to elect their candidates. The prospect 
seemed on the surface fair for the Democrats, 
and rather desperate for the Republicans. But 
the sudden and unexpected resignation of Jus- 
tice David Davis from the Supreme Court, the 
member of the Court, who, on account of his 
independence in politics, it was thought would 
be selected by his colleagues as the fifth judi- 
cial member of the Commission, in order to ac- 
cept the United States senatorship from Illinois, 
to which he had been elected by the Democratic 
legislature of Ilhnois, left four members, all Re- 
publicans, in the Supreme Court from among 
whom the justices designated in the act must 
choose the fifth judicial member of the Com- 
mission. The Commission as finally constituted 
contained thus eight Republicans and seven 
Democrats. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 47 

The facts in the disputed cases were as follows: 
The returns from Florida consisted of the report 
of the regular canvassing board created by the 
State legislature to the governor that the Re- 
publican electors had been chosen by the voters, 
the certificate of Governor Stearns given to 
these electors, and the vote of the electors for 
Hayes and Wheeler; also a paper containing 
votes for Tilden and Hendricks given by certain 
persons representing themselves as the electors 
chosen by the voters, but not accompanied by 
the report of any canvassing board or officer to 
the governor designating them as the persons 
chosen electors, and not certified to by the 
governor. The returns from South Carolina 
were in a similar condition. 

Those from Louisiana consisted of two com- 
plete sets, each containing the report of a can- 
vassing board, appointed by a body claiming to 
be the State legislature, to different persons, each 
claiming to be the lawful governor, one report 
declaring that the Republican electors had been 
chosen by the voters, the other that the Demo- 
cratic electors had been so chosen, also the cer- 
tificate of different persons, each claiming to be 



48 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the lawful governor, to each body of electors, 
testifying that each were the true electors of 
the State, and the vote of one of these bodies 
of electors for Hayes and Wheeler and of the 
other for Tilden and Hendricks. 

Finally, the returns from Oregon consisted of 
two sets; one of which contained a report from 
the State canvassing officer, the Secretary of 
State, declaring the election of the Republican 
electors by the voters, also the vote of this body 
for Hayes and Wheeler, and a statement of the 
selection of one member of this body by the 
others, on account of the fact that one of them 
selected by the voters held at the time of his 
election an office under the national govern- 
ment, and was, therefore, ineligible. The other 
set contained the governor's certificate to certain 
persons claiming to be the lawful presidential 
electors, the vote of this body, two for Hayes 
and Wheeler and one for Tilden and Hendricks, 
and an account of the selection of two members 
of this body by one member, the one to whom 
the governor handed the certificate of election, 
to fill the places of the two elected by the peo- 
ple, but who had refused to serve with the per- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 49 

son having the governor's certificate in his pos- 
session, on the ground that he had not received 
a majority of the votes cast for the electors 
and was a Democrat, in other words, on the 
ground that the governor, who was himself a 
Democrat, had not acted lawfully in giving the 
certificate to a Democrat who had not received 
a majority of the votes of the people. 

In all of these disputed cases the Electoral 
Commission gave, by a vote of eight to seven, 
the electoral vote of these States to Hayes and 
Wheeler. It was said then by many, and has 
been said ever since by some, because the eight 
men voting to do so were Republicans. I have 
never seen why it could not be said with much 
more force that the seven men voting against 
so doing, and voting to give the electoral votes 
of the first three and two of the electoral votes 
of the fourth to Tilden and Hendricks did so 
simply and solely because they were Democrats. 
They did not have a leg nor a peg to stand upon 
or hang upon in either one of the cases. 

In Florida and South Carolina the self- 
styled Democratic electors had no certifica- 
tion to their election by any board or officer 



50 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

authorized thereto by either the legislature of 
the State or the Congress of the United States. 
The Tilden counsel before the Commission 
claimed that the RepubHcan canvassing boards 
had thrown out returns from certain polhng 
places where the majority was in favor of the 
Democratic candidates for electors. But these 
canvassing boards had the right and power to 
do this, given to them by the respective State 
legislatures, empowered thereto by the Consti- 
tution of the United States, upon the existence 
of certain conditions of fraud, violence, or in- 
timidation, of the existence of which the said 
legislatures had made these boards the final 
judges. The Tilden lawyers also claimed that 
there had been United States soldiers stationed 
at the polls, and that this invalidated the elec- 
tion. But they were there by authority of a 
statute of the Congress of the United States, a 
statute the enactment of which was undoubt- 
edly within the constitutional power of Congress. 
In Louisiana the claimed Democratic electors 
had certificates from a claimed canvassing 
board created by a claimed legislature and also 
from a claimed governor. But the claimed 



PRESIDENT HAYES 51 

legislature which created this canvassing board 
and this claimed governor had never had any 
legal existence, while the legislature creating 
the canvassing board which had reported the 
election of the Republican electors to the gov- 
ernor and the governor who had furnished 
these electors with his certificate to their elec- 
tion had been recognized as the lawful legisla- 
ture and the lawful governor of the State by 
every department of the United States Govern- 
ment. It was also claimed by the Tilden counsel 
before the Commission that the Republican can- 
vassing board in Louisiana had thrown out the 
returns from certain voting precincts where the 
Democrats were in majority, and had thus 
given the State to the Republican electors, but 
there was no more evidence that they had done 
this than that the terrorizing organizations of 
the Democrats had by intimidation kept the 
Republican voters away from the polls in these 
places. Anyhow, the lawful legislature of the 
State had, in the exercise of a power vested in 
it by the Constitution of the United States, 
authorized the canvassing board to do this at 
its own discretion, in case of fraud, violence. 



52 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

or intimidation, of the existence of which con- 
dition the board was made by the legislature 
the final judge. 

The Electoral Commission could not, there- 
fore, have refused to receive the returns of these 
canvassing boards, or to count the votes of the 
electors designated therein for the President 
and Vice-President, without violating the pro- 
vision of the Constitution of the United States 
itself, vesting in the State legislatures respec- 
tively the sole power of determining the manner 
of appointing the electors of the President and 
Vice-President from the respective States. 

The case of Oregon was more compHcated 
but equally clear. The Secretary of State, the 
ultimate canvassing officer of the State, as desig- 
nated by the State legislature, reported by 
regular return to the governor the election of 
the three Republican electors. One of these, 
named Watts, held a small post-office, and was 
thereby disqualified as an elector. Thereupon 
the governor, a Democrat, named Grover, gave 
his certificate to the other two Republican 
electors and to the Democratic candidate for 
elector, who, after the Republican electors, had 



PRESIDENT HAYES 53 

the highest number of votes though, of course, 
not a majority of the votes cast for electors, in 
place of the disquahfied Watts. This man's 
name was Cronin, and it was to him, in fact, 
that the governor handed his certificate for all 
three. This manoeuvre was, of course, for the 
purpose of placing Cronin in a position to force 
the two Republican electors, whose names were 
on the certificate, to act with him, and thus 
give two electoral votes from Oregon to Hayes 
and Wheeler and one to Tilden and Hendricks, 
which, in the condition of the vote in the other 
States, would have elected Tilden and Hen- 
dricks President and Vice-President. The Re- 
publican electors refused, however, to act with 
Cronin, but met by themselves and chose a 
third man, Watts, by the bye, who had mean- 
time resigned his office, and sent their three 
votes for Hayes and Wheeler to the president 
of the Senate of the United States, attested by 
a copy of the report to the governor by the 
Secretary of State of the State, the ultimate can- 
vassing officer of the State, of their election as 
electors. Cronin, on the other hand, chose two 
persons to act with him, and sent from his body 



54 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

two electoral votes for Hayes and Wheeler and 
one for Tilden and Hendricks to the president 
of the Senate of the United States, accompanied 
by the certificate of the governor to his own 
election, but not as to the election of the other 
two acting with him. 

The Electoral Commission went, of course, 
behind the certificate of the governor who, as 
we have seen, was acting in giving his certificate 
under an act of Congress, but stopped, of course, 
at the report of the ultimate canvassing officer 
of the State, the Secretary of State, who derived 
his authority from the State legislature, by 
virtue of its independent power over the man- 
ner of appointing the electors, vested in it 
by the Constitution of the United States. The 
right of the two Republican electors to fill the 
vacancy made by the disqualification of Watts 
had been settled by the vote of both houses 
of Congress in previous cases of this nature. 

It was not, therefore, a partisan act on the 
part of the Electoral Commission to give the 
entire electoral vote of the State of Oregon, and 
of the States of Florida, Louisiana, and South 
CaroHna, to the Republican candidates for the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 55 

presidency and vice-presidency, but a strictly 
legal and constitutional act. They could not 
have done otherwise without infracting the 
Constitution of the United States and invading 
the power of the State legislatures respectively, 
vested in them and secured to them by the 
Constitution of the United States. 

No President nor Vice-President had ever had 
a more complete title legally to his office than 
did Mr. Hayes and Mr. Wheeler. In Oregon 
there was no doubt that both legally and morally 
the Republicans were in the right and the Demo- 
crats in the wrong. The Democratic governor 
had nothing to stand on either in law, prece- 
dent, or morality. His act in furnishing Cronin 
with the certificate of election was sheer partisan 
arbitrariness. And if there were any grounds 
in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina of a 
moral nature against the Republicans, they 
were entirely overbalanced by those against 
the Democrats. If the Republican canvassing 
boards had thrown out the returns of certain 
precincts, it was because, they said, fraud, vio- 
lence, or intimidation had rendered the counting 
of such returns unlawful, and they were the 



56 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

final judges of that question. It all depended 
upon whether the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments to the Constitution of the United 
States were to be upheld in these States or not. 
If they were, then from every point of view, 
legal and moral, the Republicans were in the 
right. They have been in large measure set 
aside since then, but at that time they were 
regarded as of full force, and no officer either 
of the United States or of the State would have 
fulfilled his sworn duty had he disregarded their 
provisions. Moreover, I am entirely convinced 
that Mr. Hayes would never have entered upon 
the office of President had he not known that 
his title was above all just reproach. He had 
the means of judging of this matter to the ex- 
tent not possessed by any other man. His am- 
bition was always subject to his moral sense. 
The approval of his own conscience stood with 
him above everything else. This was even more 
true, if possible, of Mrs. Hayes. There was in 
his household no woman's immoderate love of 
place and glory to lead him astray, but a help- 
mate, yea, a guide in all right-doing. 

Notwithstanding all this, the manner of 



PRESIDENT HAYES 57 

President Hayes' election was an embarrass- 
ment and a handicap to him in many ways, 
and has served in the hands of designing men 
to depreciate the great work of his administra- 
tion. As time goes on, however, and as the 
partisan hatreds which clustered around the 
election are lost from view, that work looms 
larger and ever larger. 

Although there had been threats of violence, 
both secret and open, the inauguration went off 
quietly and successfully. The inaugural ad- 
dress was a model of sound sense, wise states- 
manship, genuine patriotism, and cordial good- 
will, expressed in concise, chaste, and elegant 
language, and pronounced with a manly firm- 
ness and grace which impressed most favorably 
and profoundly all those who heard it and all 
who read it in the public prints. The thing 
most significant about it was the conviction 
which it carried that the new President was 
firmly resolved to live up to the pledges of the 
party platform and of his letter of acceptance 
of the nomination, and not to regard them as 
mere campaign documents to be ignored and 
forgotten after the election. While this was 



58 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

most gratifying and encouraging to the people, 
it was startling and disquieting to the so-called 
elder statesmen, Blaine, Conkling, Cameron, 
Logan, and the rest, chiefly because of the civil- 
service reform pledges of the platform, which 
President Hayes repeated with great emphasis 
in the inaugural and declared himself unaltera- 
bly determined, in so far as it lay within his 
power, to fulfil. This would destroy the pat- 
ronage system in the appointment to office 
upon which their power rested, and upon which 
the existing organization of the party depended 
in very large measure. I dare say that they 
thought they were sincere in opposing the Presi- 
dent in this matter, but the country gave them 
quickly and sharply to understand that they 
were out of touch with the views of the plain 
people in regard to it. 

Before going to Washington for his inaugura- 
tion Mr. Hayes had fixed upon the three chief 
members of his Cabinet. While he had done 
this quite independently, he had not done it 
arbitrarily. He had conferred with a few 
trusted friends, but he had really consulted the 
country and had selected the men whom na- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 59 

tional, and in one case at least international, 
reputation had pointed out as the best-fitted 
men in the land for the positions. 

First of all, there was the profound and at 
the same time brilliant lawyer, Mr. William M. 
Evarts, equally learned in public as in private 
law, whose great qualities had been manifested 
in his great achievements in the impeachment 
trial of President Johnson, in the presentation 
of the American case before the Geneva Tribu- 
nal, and in the argument of the Republican case 
before the Electoral Commission. Under all of 
these supreme tests he had shown himself the 
most sound and learned constitutional and inter- 
national lawyer and the most skilful diplomatist 
which the country possessed. He was a genu- 
ine Republican, but not a wire-pulling politi- 
cian, and not so hide-bound in his party allegi- 
ance as to suit the ring-leaders of the party. 
He knew more of law, history, and philosophy 
than all of them put together, and such a 
man is not naturally a follower, but a leader. 
The principle of natural selection designated 
him for the secretaryship of state, and Mr. 
Hayes had fixed upon him for the position 



60 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

before he made the famous plea in the election 
case. 

He was not, however, the first to be ap- 
proached by Mr. Hayes in constituting the 
membership of his Cabinet. The first to whom 
the formal proposal was made to share in the 
responsibilities of the administration was the 
President-elect's long-time friend and fellow 
Ohioan, Senator John Sherman. Mr. Hayes 
asked Senator Sherman to take the exceedingly 
responsible position of the secretaryship of the 
treasury. In doing this Mr. Hayes had simply 
taken the man whom the whole country re- 
garded as the soundest man in the nation, next 
to Mr. Hayes himself, on the monetary question, 
and the best-equipped man to discharge the 
great responsibilities of conducting the finances 
of the country through the period of preparation 
for the resumption of specie payments to the 
accomplishment of that result. He had long 
been looked up to in the Congress of the United 
States as the highest authority among them on 
the subject of public finance, and the Resump- 
tion Act of 1875 was, in large measure, his work, 
in much larger measure than that of any other 



PRESIDENT HAYES 61 

man. Mr. Hayes not only asked Senator Sher- 
man first and directly to become a member, 
under the circumstances of the times perhaps 
the most important member, of his official house- 
hold, but he availed himself of Senator Sher- 
man's influence in Washington and in the East 
to secure Mr. Evarts. 

The third member of his Cabinet selected by 
Mr. Hayes was chosen by him more largely 
upon grounds of personal preference than either 
Mr. Sherman or Mr. Evarts — in fact, than any 
other member of the body. I mean exactly by 
this statement that the general consensus had 
less part in the selection of this member, and the 
feelings of the President-elect himself greater 
part, than in the choice of any other. It was 
the German- American, Carl Schurz, profound 
scholar, brilliant orator, brave soldier, wise 
statesman, independent thinker, great reader, 
honest man, genial companion, and courteous 
gentleman. These were qualities which recom- 
mended him irresistibly to a man like Mr. Hayes. 
In fact, the two men were as sympathetic, as 
similar in their natures, as it is possible for two 
men of different nationality to be. Politically 



62 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

it was, in large measure, Mr. Schurz's zeal for 
civil-service reform and his immense fund of in- 
formation regarding administrative systems and 
practices in foreign countries which determined 
Mr. Hayes to make him his Secretary of the 
Interior and give him the power to set up the 
models of improved administrative service in 
this department, from which all the others 
might take lesson. Mr. Hayes had settled upon 
these three men as the leading members of his 
Cabinet of advisers before he went to Wash- 
ington to take up the reins of government — in 
fact, before he had been declared elected — and 
nothing and nobody could shake him from his 
determination. And there was not the slight- 
est reason why he should have been. He had 
selected the best talent, character, and com- 
petency which the Republican party and the 
country at large possessed to aid him in the 
solution of the three great problems — the paci- 
fication of the South, the regulation of the mon- 
etary and financial system, and the reform of the 
civil service — the three great problems which 
confronted his administration at the outset and 
claimed by far the largest share of attention and 
activity throughout. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 63 

Mr. Hayes had also before going to Wash- 
ington considered most seriously nominating 
General Johnston, the famous Confederate 
leader, to be his Secretary of War. There 
was no doubt of General Johnston's techni- 
cal qualifications to fill the position, and Mr. 
Hayes desired to give this proof to the South of 
his sincere intentions towards that section of the 
country. He thought that it would be the seal 
of the re-establishment of the union of feeling 
between North and South in a common nation- 
ality. He felt it necessary, however, to consult 
some of the Republican leaders in the matter, 
and was immediately made to understand that 
his generous impulses were not shared by them. 
With great reluctance he gave up Johnston, for 
he entertained very high respect for his ability 
and character. He still clung, however, to his 
plan of having a Southerner as a member of his 
official family. After reaching Washington he 
settled upon Senator David M. Key, of Ten- 
nessee. He was a Democrat and had served as 
a Confederate soldier, but he hailed from a 
State that had furnished almost as many sol- 
diers to the Union army as to the Confederate 
army, and he was a genuinely reconstructed 



64 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

rebel. He had shown this in his attitude upon 
all questions coming before Congress, and he 
had exercised a most favorable influence over 
the Southern members in Congress during the 
trying session of 1876-7. The selection was 
a wise one, and Mr. Key proved himself a valu- 
able counsellor of the President in the Southern 
question as well as an able administrator of the 
Post-OflSce Department. 

In the selection of the other three members 
of the Cabinet President Hayes seems to have 
been influenced in a greater degree by the lead- 
ers of the party in Congress, though not by the 
domineering element among them. He refused 
to give ear to Blaine, who was anxious to place 
one of his lieutenants, W. P. Frye, in the Cab- 
inet, but he took counsel of Senator Hoar and 
selected, with Hoar's advice. Judge Charles 
Devens as his Attorney-General. The choice 
was an excellent one. It could hardly have 
been improved. Desire to show his respect for 
Governor Morton, the great war governor of 
Indiana, seems also to have been an element in 
the selection of Colonel Richard W. Thompson, 
the brilliant Indiana orator, who had made 



PRESIDENT HAYES 65 

the nominating speech for Morton at the Cin- 
cinnati convention, as the Secretary of the 
Navy. 

Who or what recommended the selection of 
Mr. McCrary to Mr. Hayes as Secretary of War 
is not so certain. Mr. McCrary was an excellent 
lawyer, but had made no mark as a soldier. I 
find by looking over the Congressional debates 
that he was the member of Congress who seems 
to have first suggested the idea of the Electoral 
Commission as the means for solving the prob- 
lem of the contested election. He was an au- 
thority on the law of elections. President Hayes 
probably had him in mind first for the attorney- 
generalship, and after Devens' name came up 
for a place in the Cabinet changed him over to 
the secretaryship of war. 

Taken all together, it was the strongest body 
of men, each best fitted for the place assigned 
to him, that ever sat around the council-table 
of a President of the United States. Thomp- 
son was the weakest one among them. He 
came the nearest also to being a poUtical ap- 
pointment. But his want of equal efficiency 
with the others was more because of his ad- 



66 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

vanced age than any lack of original endowment 
or practical experience. 

There was no valid reason why the Senate 
should have manifested any hesitation what- 
ever in the confirmation of any one of them, 
except, perhaps, the Democrat, Key. It might 
have been a question whether a Democrat could 
conscientiously uphold the general policy of a 
Republican administration. Senator Key had 
already informed the President, however, that 
if he should feel at any time that he could not 
do so, he would promptly resign his portfolio. 
Nevertheless, the Senate, under the leadership 
of the stalwart Republicans, departed from its 
unbroken custom of confirming the President's 
nominees of the members of his official family 
immediately and without reference to any com- 
mittees and voted to refer them all to com- 
mittees for examination and report. Even 
Senator Sherman's nomination went with the 
rest, although it had always been the usage of 
the Senate to confirm the nomination of one of 
its own members to any oflSce immediately and 
without reference. It was all meant as an at- 
tack upon the President for exercising his own 



PRESIDENT HAYES 67 

independent discretion in nominating the mem- 
bers of his Cabinet, instead of asking Blaine, 
ConkHng, Cameron, and some others each to 
nominate a member for him. 

The action of the Senate, however, immedi- 
ately produced a revolt in the country. The 
press generally disapproved in emphatic lan- 
guage of the departure of the Senate from its 
immemorial custom in this instance. Especially 
the Republican press manifested, in many cases, 
intense indignation at this attempt to discredit 
and weaken the Republican administration, 
especially at a time when Republican unity and 
harmony were most needed. Individual sena- 
tors were stormed with telegrams and letters 
from their particular constituents demanding 
that the Senate recede from its indefensible 
position. It was on Wednesday, March 7th, 
that the President sent the nominations to the 
Senate. By Saturday the battle between the 
Senate and the country was over. On Thursday 
the Senate had taken the nomination of Senator 
Sherman from the committee to which it had 
been referred on the day before and confirmed it. 
On Saturday, the 9th, the committees reported 



68 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

all the nominations favorably, and the Senate 
confirmed them all immediately and by almost 
unanimous vote. 

It was evident thus from the outset that Mr. 
Hayes' administration would be involved in 
more or less of conflict with the elder statesmen 
of the Republican party, but that it would be 
sustained by the people, and that, too, in con- 
siderable degree, without regard to party. It 
is true that Mr. Hayes himself was a loyal Re- 
publican, a much sounder Republican than 
either Blaine, Conkling, or Cameron, the men 
whom General Noyes called "invincible in peace 
and invisible in war." Mr. Hayes had proved 
his Republicanism on the battle-field as well as 
in civil office and in the ranks of the plain citi- 
zens. But he understood better than any of 
them the distinctions between civil rights and 
political qualifications, and he furthermore un- 
derstood the difference between the political side 
and the business side of the administration. In 
other words, Mr. Hayes was a political scientist 
and a statesman as well as a party man. He 
knew the place of party in the system of the 
Republic. He knew, therefore, where loyalty 



PRESIDENT HAYES 69 

to party must give way to loyalty to country. 
He knew that the exaggeration of party loyalty 
made the attainment of national unity and the 
development of a national consensus of opinion 
in regard to the fundamental principles of rights 
and policies impossible. With him, therefore, 
party loyalty must be kept within the limita- 
tions imposed upon it by sound political sci- 
ence, constitutional law, and the historic ideals of 
American policy. He himself expressed the re- 
lation which should exist between party and 
people, the relation which he undertook to es- 
tablish as the aim and end of his administration, 
in the famous sentence which has now become 
one of the most important of American political 
axioms, viz.: "He serves his party best who 
serves his country best." 



LECTURE III 

THE SOUTHERN POLICY AND THE 
FINANCIAL POLICY 

^S we have seen, the Republican platform 
/-% promised the pacification of the South, 
Mr. Hayes' letter of acceptance of the 
nomination for the presidency reiterated it with 
more emphasis, and the President's inaugural 
address contained the assertion of his deter- 
mination to realize it. If any of the statesmen 
or politicians who framed the platform sup- 
posed that they were simply composing high- 
sounding phrases for the purposes of the cam- 
paign, and that these would be allowed to go 
the usual way of such pronunciamentos by the 
administration, they had greatly misread the 
character of the man whom they had helped 
to make the chief magistrate of the nation. It 
was observed that during the campaign the 
Republican managers, writers, and speakers had 
emphasized the financial question and had al- 
lowed the Southern question to fall into the 

70 



PRESIDENT HAYES 71 

background. And it must have been something 
of a shock to the "Stalwarts," the elder states- 
men, that the President put the Southern ques- 
tion first in his inaugural and dwelt upon it at 
greatest length, and then followed it with his 
earnest appeal for civil-service reform, thus in- 
dicating to the country that his administration 
was to be devoted most especially to the solu- 
tion of these two great problems, and to that of 
the Southern situation first of all. 

At the time of the election of 1876, all the 
Southern States, except Florida, Louisiana, and 
South Carolina, had, partly through means of 
doubtful legality, indeed, freed themselves from 
carpetbag-negro domination. Of these three 
the situation of Florida was most favorable. 
The final determination of the State elections in 
this State was a function of its supreme court, 
and happily there was one universally recog- 
nized court in Florida — and but one. This 
court sat in judgment on the State elections 
of 1876 and decided that the Democratic can- 
didates for governor and lieutenant-governor 
had been elected. The Republican candidates 
simply protested, but did not resist forcibly nor 



72 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

demand the support of the Washington govern- 
ment. The question as to Florida was thus 
solved by the State law and State administra- 
tion, and Florida was reclaimed by its own 
white citizens. 

The situation in Louisiana and South Car- 
olina was, however, quite different. The leg- 
islatures of these States as well as that of 
Florida had, as we have seen in the previous 
lecture, constructed returning-boards as the 
final authority in the counting of the votes of 
the suffrage holders, with the power to throw 
out the returns of the election officers from pre- 
cincts and districts in which fraud or force had 
been practised. This was entirely regular, as 
we have also seen, in regard to the election of 
the electors of the President and the Vice- 
President, because the Constitution of the 
United States vests this power in the several 
State legislatures, and there is no other body 
or organ in the State which can lawfully inter- 
fere with the legislature in the exercise of this 
function, not even the people of the State them- 
selves. 

Whether these returning-boards were, how- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 73 

ever, the final authority for counting the votes 
of the suffrage holders for State officers and the 
members of the State legislatures was quite 
another question, and depended for its solution 
upon the provisions of the constitutions of the 
respective States. 

In the States of Louisiana and South Carolina 
these returning-boards had assumed to act in 
both capacities, and had returned the Repub- 
lican candidates for governor — Packard in Lou- 
isiana and Chamberlain in South Carolina — as 
elected, and also the Republican candidates for 
the legislature in sufficient number to create 
Republican legislatures in both States. The 
Democrats, on the other hand, claimed that the 
returning-boards created by the legislatures had, 
according to the State constitutions, no authority 
over the returns of the election officers of the 
precincts and districts, and claimed on the face 
of the returns the election of Francis T. Nicholls 
as governor of Louisiana, and Wade Hampton 
as governor of South Carolina, and of a suffi- 
cient number of candidates for the legislature 
to constitute the lawful legislature in each of 
these States. 



74 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Both Packard and NichoUs had set up State 
governments in Louisiana, and both Chamber- 
lain and Hampton had set up State governments 
in South Carohna, and each was supported by a 
legislature claiming to be the lawful legislature of 
the State. In Louisiana there were also two su- 
preme courts, one attached to each government. 
The Republican governors and legislatures were 
installed in the regular State House in each 
State, and were defended by detachments of 
United States troops within the buildings, or 
encamped around them. The Democratic gov- 
ernments had, on the other hand, occupied 
fixed quarters, and were in potential if not 
actual command of the State militia and were 
sustained by voluntary contributions from the 
taxpayers. The jurisdiction of the Republican 
governments, finally, was recognized over only 
a very limited area in the two States, while that 
of the Democratic governments was pretty gen- 
erally recognized throughout the same. 

It was clear that matters had^reached a crisis 
in the Southern problem, and that the danger 
of insurrection was extremely imminent. One 
of the great questions which the President had to 



PRESIDENT HAYES 75 

determine in his own mind was whether he could 
trust the white leaders in these States to secure 
the constitutional rights of the blacks. Nearly 
twelve years had passed since the close of the 
Civil War, and it was pretty clear to any far- 
seeing, unprejudiced mind that the regime of 
the carpetbaggers and negroes, supported by 
the United States soldiery, was a dismal failure 
and a lasting disgrace, and that matters could 
not be made much worse by any change which 
could be fairly conceived. The Republican 
Stalwarts tried to hold the President by the 
argument that the titles of Packard and Cham- 
berlain, and that of the legislatures acting with 
them, rested on the same basis as his own, viz.: 
the decisions of the returning-boards ; but he 
was constitutional lawyer enough to know that, 
while these decisions were lawful and binding 
in his case, by virtue of a provision of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, they were subject 
to revision by higher authority in State elections, 
if so ordered by the constitution of the State 
concerned. He saw clearly that he was not 
compelled by law, or even by reason of con- 
sistency, to give the mihtary power of the 



76 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

United States to the maintenance of the Repub- 
lican State governments in Louisiana and South 
Carohna against the Democratic State govern- 
ments, unless the contest between the two gov- 
ernments in each State should lead to domestic 
violence, and the legislature or legislatures 
thereof, or the executive or executives thereof, 
should apply to him for protection, in which 
event he would have to determine which was 
the real government of the State, and extend 
military support, if necessary, to this one. 

President Hayes was thoroughly convinced 
that the time had come to test the assurances 
of the responsible white men of these States, 
whether they had been engaged twelve years 
before in rebellion against the national govern- 
ment and sovereignty or not, that the rights, 
both civil and political, of all classes of the 
population would be equally upheld and pro- 
tected, if the United States would withdraw its 
military power and leave to the States their 
constitutional autonomy; but he was wisely 
mindful to do this in a manner and with such 
preparatory steps as to make sure that when he 
withdrew the troops the contention between the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 77 

rival governments would settle itself by the im- 
mediate subsidence of the claims of one of them 
in each case, and not lead again to insurrec- 
tionary movements, such as might require the 
reintervention of the military power of the 
United States. 

With this in viev/ President Hayes took up 
the question as related to South Carolina first, 
and for two reasons: primarily, because there 
was only one supreme court and only one set 
of judicial organs in South Carolina, and there- 
fore there could be no conflicting decisions of 
the State courts in regard to the State elections 
or anything else, which could not be overcome 
simply by appeal to the one universally recog- 
nized supreme court from the lower courts; 
and, secondly, because the high and patriotic 
character of the Republican claimant to the 
governorship in South Carolina encouraged 
President Hayes to believe that a personal ap- 
peal on the part of the President to Mr. Cham- 
berlain would meet with a generous response, 
and probably with disinterested co-operation. 
On the 23d of March, not quite three weeks from 
the day of his inauguration as President, Mr. 



78 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Hayes caused to be addressed to Mr. Chamber- 
lain and Mr. Hampton invitations to come to 
Washington for a conference with him regard- 
ing the pohtical condition of the State of South 
Carohna. The notes of invitation contained 
the following significant paragraph: "It is the 
earnest desire of the President to be able to 
put an end as speedily as possible to all appear- 
ance of intervention of the military authority 
of the United States in the political derange- 
ments which affect the government and afflict 
the people of South Carolina. In this desire 
the President cannot doubt he truly represents 
the patriotic feeling of the great body of the 
people of the United States." 

With this the two gentlemen claiming the 
governorship of South Carolina were not left in 
doubt in regard to what they would have to face 
in Washington. The Republican Chamberlain 
went to meet the Republican President unher- 
alded and depressed, while the Democrat Hamp- 
ton's journey was like a triumphal procession. 
On March 29th they were both in the national 
capital. The President went patiently and 
thoroughly over the whole question with each 



PRESIDENT HAYES 79 

of them, during the course of which conversa- 
tions he became even more thoroughly con- 
vinced that the time had come for leaving the 
States of the South to themselves in their own 
local affairs. Able and persuasive as Mr. Cham- 
berlain was, his arguments only revealed the 
more clearly that his claim to rule could be 
sustained only on the principle that the State 
of South Carolina was not a State of the Union 
but a military province. The time had passed 
for that. 

On April 3, 1877, after due consultation with 
his advisers, the President took the momentous 
step. By a formal note addressed to the Secre- 
tary of War, he gave the renowned order which 
settled the Southern question and ended the 
conflict between the North and the South. It 
read as follows: "Prior to my entering upon 
the duties of the presidency, there had been sta- 
tioned by order of my predecessor in the State 
House at Columbia, South Carolina, a detach- 
ment of United States Infantry. Finding them 
in that place, I have thought proper to delay a 
decision of the question of their removal until 
I could consider and determine whether the 



80 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

condition of affairs in that State is now such as 
either to require or justify the continued mili- 
tary occupation of the State House. In my 
opinion there does not now exist in that State 
such domestic violence as is contemplated by 
the Constitution as the ground upon which the 
military power of the national government may 
be invoked for the defense of the State. There 
are, it is true, grave and serious disputes as to 
the rights of certain claimants to the chief execu- 
tive office of that State. But these are to be 
settled and determined, not by the executive of 
the United States, but by such orderly and 
peaceable methods as may be provided by the 
constitution and laws of the State. I feel as- 
sured that no resort to violence is contemplated 
in any quarter, but that, on the contrary, the 
disputes in question are to be settled solely by 
such peaceful remedies as the constitution and 
laws of the State provide. Under these cir- 
cumstances, in this confidence, I now deem it 
proper to take action in accordance with the 
principles announced when I entered upon the 
duties of the presidency. You are, therefore, 
directed to see that the proper orders are issued 
for the removal of said troops from the State 



PRESIDENT HAYES 81 

House to their previous place of encamp- 
ment." 

At midday on April 10th, the United States 
soldiers marched out of the State House to their 
barracks. Mr. Chamberlain made no resistance 
to the occupation of the State House by Mr. 
Hampton, except the publication of an address 
asserting the justice of his cause, and complain- 
ing of the desertion of it by the national govern- 
ment. The two legislatures became one by the 
action of the proper State authorities in deter- 
mining the questions of State elections. All the 
State, county, and city officers recognized the 
rightful authority of the Hampton government. 
The courts, as we have seen, were already in 
harmony with it. It required but a few days 
to restore peace and order and good government, 
government by its own people, by its own best 
people, to the long-suffering State. And but a 
few months had passed when the President's 
course, so stoutly opposed by the RepubHcan 
Stalwarts and the radical Negrophiles at the 
outset, was approved so universally as having 
stood the practical test, that nobody of any 
importance could be found lifting a voice in 
further criticism of it. 



82 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

The situation in Louisiana was somewhat 
more difficult to deal with. There were two 
governors, two legislatures, and two supreme 
courts, and each governor had a military force; 
the RepubHcan claimant, Packard, had the 
metropolitan police of New Orleans and the 
United States soldiers, and the Democrat claim- 
ant, NichoUs, had the State mihtia. Moreover, 
Packard was a genuine carpetbagger, with none 
of the moral fibre and real patriotic spirit of 
Chamberlain. 

After much reflection President Hayes deter- 
mined to send a commission to Louisiana to 
examine into the situation, and report to him 
a plan or suggestion for settling the problem of 
the double government in the State of Louisiana 
in accordance with the constitution of the State, 
and "without involving the element of military 
power" in the settlement, and he instructed the 
commission to try to secure the universal recog- 
nition of one government, as a whole, if possible, 
and, if not, to try to get into a single body a 
majority of the persons holding certificates of 
election to membership in the legislature under 
each set of electoral returns, so as to constitute 
a single legislature from which, as a base, to 



PRESIDENT HAYES 83 

work out the unification of the other branches 
of the State government. The President gave 
the commission most particularly to understand 
that they were not to investigate the State elec- 
tions or the State procedures for counting the 
votes for State ojQScers and the members of the 
State legislature. That had been already done 
by Congressional committees. 

According to the report of the commission, the 
following situation was found to exist on the 
date of the arrival of its members, April 6th: 
"Governor Packard was at the State House 
with his legislature and friends and armed police 
force. As there was no quorum in the Senate, 
even upon his own theory of law, his legislature 
was necessarily inactive. The supreme court, 
which recognized his authority, had not at- 
tempted to transact any business since it had 
been dispossessed of its court-room and the 
custody of its records, on the 9th of January, 
1877. He had no organized militia, alleging 
that his deficiency in that respect was owing to 
his obedience to the orders of President Grant, 
to take no steps to change the relative posi- 
tion of himself and Governor NichoUs. His 
main reliance was upon his alleged legal title, 



84 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

claiming that it was the constitutional duty of 
the President to recognize it and to afford 
him such military assistance as might be nec- 
essary to enable him to assert his authority as 
governor. 

"Governor Nicholls was occupying the Odd- 
Fellows' Hall as a State House. His legislature 
met there, and was actively engaged in the busi- 
ness of legislation. All the departments of the 
city government of New Orleans recognized his 
authority. The supreme court, nominated by 
him and confirmed by his Senate, was holding 
daily sessions and had heard about two hundred 
cases. The time for the collection of taxes had 
not arrived, but considerable sums of money, 
in the form of taxes, had been voluntarily paid 
into his treasury, out of which he was defraying 
the ordinary expenses of the State government. 
The Nicholls legislature had a quorum in the 
Senate upon either the Nicholls or Packard 
theory of law, and a quorum in the House upon 
the Nicholls, but not on the Packard, theory. 
The Packard legislature had a quorum in the 
House on its own theory of law, but, as already 
stated, not in the Senate, and was thus disabled 



PRESIDENT HAYES 85 

from legislation that would be valid, even in 
the judgment of its own party. 

"The commission found it to be very diflScult 
to ascertain the precise extent to which the re- 
spective governments were acknowledged in the 
various parishes outside of New Orleans: but 
it is safe to say that the changes which had 
taken place in parishes after the organization 
of the two governments, January 9, 1877, were 
in favor of the NichoUs government." 

Under these conditions the commission soon 
found it impossible to bring the two claimants 
for the governorship to any arrangement, and 
turned to the task of bringing together in a single 
legislative body a sufficient number of members 
holding their certificate of election under either 
theory of the election law to form a quorum. 
In a number of cases the election officers had 
returned the same persons as members of the 
Nicholls legislature as were certified by the 
Republican returning-board as members of the 
Packard legislature. These persons had first 
quahfied in the Packard legislature. But if they 
could be induced to go over into the Nicholls 
legislature, they would bring up the member- 



86 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

ship of the NichoUs legislature to a legal quo- 
rum in both houses, and leave the two houses 
of the Packard legislature without a quorum, 
on either theory of the election law, in either. 

On the 20th of April the commission sent a 
telegram to President Hayes, advising the im- 
mediate announcement of a date by him when 
he would order the withdrawal of the United 
States soldiery from the support of the Packard 
government. By this time the Nicholls legis- 
lature had secured a quorum of members in 
both houses whose elections had been certified 
by the election machinery of both governments, 
and the Packard legislature had been left with- 
out a quorum in either house, under any theory 
of the election law, and the commission had also 
reached the conclusion that Packard's govern- 
ment outside of the precincts of the State House 
had no existence, and never would have any un- 
less held up at every point by the national army. 
The commission had also reached the conclu- 
sion that the withdrawal of the United States 
troops would not result in any insurrectionary 
movements, but that their retention would 
probably, almost certainly, do so. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 87 

The President issued the order for the with- 
drawal of the national military from the sup- 
port of the Packard government, and on the 
24th of April it was executed, and the final step 
was taken in restoring all the States of the South 
to their full membership in the Union, as self- 
governing bodies within the limits of the Con- 
stitution. Packard protested, but yielded more 
easily and gracefully than had been expected. 
Wade, Blaine, Garrison, Phillips, Butler, and all 
the rest of their kind poured upon the President 
their vials of wrath, some in the language of 
sorrow and pity for the backsliding President, 
and others in the language of abuse and vitu- 
peration for the treacherous man in the White 
House. I have no doubt that they were all, 
except perhaps Blaine, entirely sincere. But 
they were all wofuUy mistaken. No violence 
followed the withdrawal of the troops anywhere. 
Peace and prosperity and contentment were re- 
stored. The State government became honest, 
efficient, and economical. And the rights of 
the negroes were more perfectly realized than 
ever before. Some of the disappointed ones 
undertook to blacken the President's character 



88 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

by claiming that the President's action was 
prompted by an agreement made by him, or 
for him, by two of his Northern friends, with 
prominent Southerners, in order to secure their 
acquiescence in the Congressional canvass of the 
electoral vote. But the President and his ad- 
visers demanded immediate publicity as to 
every item of the charge, and it was at once 
manifest that he had given no assurances pri- 
vately that were anything more than a reitera- 
tion of his public statements, and that his friends 
had made no promises for him, and had done 
nothing more than express their own private 
opinions that President Hayes was a man of 
his word, and would undoubtedly undertake 
the realization of the policies announced in his 
letter of acceptance of the nomination to the 
presidency, and in his inaugural address upon 
induction into office. 

No braver, wiser, or more patriotic thing was 
ever done by any occupant of the presidential 
chair than President Hayes' work for the paci- 
fication of the South. He disregarded entirely 
the arguments of the Stalwarts that his own 
title to the office was nulhfied by his failure to 



PRESIDENT HAYES 89 

sustain that of the RepubHcan claimants in 
South Carohna and Louisiana, and that he was 
destroying the RepubHcan party in the South 
and betraying the freedmen. He saw through 
the sophistry of all this and disregarded en- 
tirely any effect which his action might have 
upon his own personal political fortunes. His 
only thought was for justice and the welfare of 
the whole country, and he held as the first 
article of his political faith the principle so hap- 
pily formulated by himself: "He serves his 
party best who serves his country best." In 
the solution of the Southern problem President 
Hayes showed himself to be a statesman of the 
first order and of the broadest national type. 
The problem itself, however, was not one of 
great intricacy. It was rather one of plain and 
elemental justice, one in which the way of solu- 
tion selected by him was supported by a major- 
ity of the people at the North. It was against 
the Stalwart faction of his own party and a few 
fanatics that he had to exercise his firmness of 
purpose. The liberal faction of his own party, 
the Democrats of the North, and the whites of 
the South were with him. The greatest strug- 



90 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

gle which he had with himself over the subject 
was the question whether he was deserting the 
just cause of the black man and delivering him 
back to servitude. Had he not been able to 
convince himself that his policy of restoring 
the autonomy of the State governments in the 
South would not lead to this result, he certainly 
could never have followed it, no matter how 
unanimous the approval of it may have been. 

On the other hand, the financial question was 
distressingly intricate, and the solution of it 
required broadness, acuteness, and originality 
in economic reasoning. It seems to me that it 
was in the handling of this question that Presi- 
dent Hayes manifested, in highest degree, his 
superiority as an independent thinker and also 
his uncompromising devotion to principle. 

As we have seen, the monetary situation at 
the time of the accession of Mr. Hayes to the 
presidency was most unsatisfactory. The coun- 
try had not recovered from the panic of 1873, 
and it was pretty generally believed that the 
chief cause of all trouble was the scarcity of 
money. We had nearly three hundred and fifty 
milHons of greenbacks, i. e., of irredeemable 



PRESIDENT HAYES 91 

legal-tender paper of the government in circula- 
tion, and about as much more of national bank- 
notes secured by government bonds and green- 
backs, and a bonded indebtedness of nearly 
fifteen hundred millions of dollars, upon about 
half of which we were paying six per cent in- 
terest, and upon the other half five per cent. 
We had a law for the resumption of specie pay- 
ment, i. e., for redeeming our paper money in 
coin on and after January 1, 1879. We had also 
the law of 1873 suspending the coinage of the 
silver dollar, which virtually made coin to mean 
gold coin, as in fact had been the case since 1853. 
It was in the face of this situation that Presi- 
dent Hayes said in his inaugural address: "Upon 
the currency question, I may be permitted to 
repeat here the statement made in my letter 
of acceptance that, in my judgment, the feel- 
ing of uncertainty inseparable from an irre- 
deemable paper currency, with its fiuctuation of 
values, is one of the greatest obstacles to a re- 
turn to prosperous times. The only safe paper 
currency is one which rests upon a coin basis, 
and is at all times promptly convertible into 
coin. I adhere to the views heretofore expressed 



92 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

by me in favor of Congressional legislation in 
behalf of an early resumption of specie pay- 
ments, and I am satisfied not only that this is 
wise, but that the interests as well as the pub- 
lic sentiment of the country imperatively de- 
mand it.*' 

Notwithstanding this warning, the State con- 
ventions of the Democratic and Greenback 
parties which occurred in the summer of 1877 
declared in favor of a repeal of the Resumption 
Act, and of the passage of an act rehabilitating 
silver as full legal-tender money on a par with 
gold, and providing for its free and unlimited 
coinage at the old rate of 16 to 1, and the State 
conventions of the Republican party west of 
the Alleghanies pronounced themselves in favor 
of the remonetizing of silver. 

In the special session of Congress in the au- 
tumn of 1877, the Bills for both purposes passed 
the House of Representatives in November by 
tremendous majorities. The Senate, which was 
still Republican, as to the majority, took up the 
Silver Bill, referred it to its finance committee, 
and on report of this committee placed the 
Bill on its calendar. The special session of Con- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 93 

gress was now near its end, but the Silver Bill 
was in position for consideration by the next 
regular session, which would open almost im- 
mediately, i. e.y on the first Monday of the fol- 
lowing month. 

This was the situation which moved Presi- 
dent Hayes to incorporate in his first annual 
message, of December 3, 1877, a discussion of 
the monetary question which has never been 
surpassed, if equalled, for correctness, concise- 
ness, and exliaustiveness anywhere in our eco- 
nomic literature. . 

Naturally a mind like his would regard the 
subject from a moral as well as an economic 
point of view. The scrupulously honest ful- 
filment of all financial obligations on the part 
of the government and on the part of individuals 
was, of course, the first article of his financial 
creed. Upon this part of the subject his words 
were as follows: "The poHcy of resumption 
should be pursued by every suitable means, and 
no legislation would be wise that should dis- 
parage the importance or retard the attainment 
of that result. I must adhere to my most ear- 
nest conviction that any wavering in purpose or 



94 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

unsteadiness in methods, so far from avoiding 
or reducing the inconvenience inseparable from 
the transition from an irredeemable to a re- 
deemable paper currency, would only tend to 
increased and prolonged disturbance in values, 
and, unless retrieved, must end in serious dis- 
order, dishonor, and disaster in the financial 
affairs of the government and of the people. 
The mischiefs which I apprehend, and urgently 
deprecate, are confined to no class of the peo- 
ple, indeed, but seem to me most certainly to 
threaten the industrious masses, whether their 
occupations are of skilled or common labor. 
To them, it seems to me, it is of prime impor- 
tance that their labor should be compensated in 
money which is itself fixed in exchangeable value 
by being irrevocably measured by the labor 
necessary to its production. This permanent 
quality of the money of the people is sought for, 
and can only be gained, by the resumption of 
specie payments. The rich, the speculative, 
the operating, the money-dealing classes may 
not always feel the mischiefs of, or may find 
casual profits in, a variable currency, but the 
misfortunes of such a currency to those who 



PRESIDENT HAYES 95 

are paid in salaries or wages are inevitable 
and remediless." And again: "I respectfully 
recommend to Congress that in any legislation 
providing for a silver coinage, and imparting to 
it the quality of legal tender, there be impressed 
upon the measure a firm provision exempting 
the payment of the public debt, heretofore 
issued and now outstanding, from payment, 
either of principal or interest, in any coinage of 
less commercial value than the present gold 
coinage of the country." 

The honest dollar for honest labor and the 
financial honor of the country were placed by 
him above all interests, in fact were the highest 
interest. When these things were secured, then 
and not till then would he consent to consider 
the subject from the point of view of economic 
policy purely. And when he came to this side 
of the question, he manifested in his treatment 
of it a soundness and f oresightedness not equalled 
by any of his contemporaries and not surpassed 
by any who have come after him. He said: 
"In adapting the new silver coinage to the or- 
dinary uses of currency in the every-day trans- 
actions of life, and prescribing the quality of 



96 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

legal tender to be assigned to it, a considera- 
tion of the first importance should be so to ad- 
just the ratio between the silver and the gold 
coinage as to accomplish the desired end of 
maintaining the circulation of the two metallic 
currencies, and keeping up the volume of the 
two precious metals as our intrinsic money. It 
is a mixed question for scientific reasoning and 
historical experience to determine how far, and 
by what methods, a practical equilibrium can 
be maintained which will keep both metals in 
circulation in their appropriate spheres of com- 
mon use. An absolute equality of commercial 
value, free from disturbing fluctuations, is hardly 
attainable, and without it an unlimited legal 
tender for private transactions assigned to both 
metals would irresistibly tend to drive out of 
circulation the dearer coinage, and disappoint 
the principal object proposed by the legislation 
in view. I apprehend, therefore, that two con- 
ditions, one, that of a near approach to equality 
of commercial value between the gold and silver 
coinage of the same denomination, and the 
other, that of a limitation of the amounts for 
which the silver coinage is to be a legal tender, are 



PRESIDENT HAYES 97 

essential to maintaining both in circulation. If 
these conditions can be successfully observed, 
the issue from the mint of silver dollars would 
afford material assistance to the community in 
the transition to redeemable paper money, and 
would facilitate the resumption of specie pay- 
ment and its permanent estabhshment. With- 
out these conditions I fear that only mischief 
and misfortune would flow from a coinage of 
silver dollars with the quahty of unlimited legal 
tender, even in private transactions." 

It is probable that these wise words of Presi- 
dent Hayes had some effect in preventing the 
passage in the Senate of the House Bill repealing 
the Resumption Act, but they did not prevent 
the passage of the Silver Bill. A large number 
of the conservative men of the country, of the 
Republican party as well as of the Democratic 
party, had become inoculated with the craze. 
The campaign for free silver became a sort of 
holy war for the "restoration of the people's 
birthright." Nevertheless, these publicly pro- 
nounced views of the President must have had 
some effect in imposing conservative action on 
the Silver Bill in the Senate. Under the leader- 



98 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

ship of Senator Allison the Bland Bill was modi- 
fied in several very important particulars. In 
place of the free-coinage provision on private 
account, the Bland-Allison Bill allowed only the 
coinage of silver on government account, limit- 
ing the amount which the government might 
coin to four millions of dollars a month, and 
fixing the amount which it must coin at two 
millions of dollars a month, and covering the 
seigniorage into the treasury of the United 
States. The process intended by the Bill was 
as follows: The government should purchase 
from two to four million dollars' worth of silver 
bullion per month, paying gold for it; coin be- 
tween two and four millions of dollars per month 
at the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one 
ounce of gold; allow the deposit of such silver 
dollars in the treasury of the United States, and 
issue silver certificates upon them in order to 
facilitate their circulation. The Bill made these 
silver dollars full legal tender in the payment of 
all debts, public or private, past or future, "ex- 
cept where otherwise expressly stipulated in the 
contract." In this form the Bill passed the 
Senate, was grudgingly concurred in by the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 99 

House, and sent to the President for his signa- 
ture. 

The pressure upon the President to approve 
it was enormous. It was declared by the press 
of the whole country that the people by over- 
whelming majority were in favor of it, certainly 
the majority of both the Democratic and Re- 
publican members in both houses of Congress 
had voted in favor of it. Even Secretary Sher- 
man, the chief financial officer of the govern- 
ment, and by reputation the soundest financier 
in the country, favored it, or at least thought 
best not to oppose it. He thought that the 
country could keep the two million dollars a 
month of silver addition to the legal-tender coin 
money on a par with gold indefinitely. Not so 
the President. He saw clearer than Sherman, 
clearer than all the leaders of both parties put 
together, and clearer than all the people, that 
this amount of silver dollars could not be kept 
on a par with gold dollars, and that to pay our 
bonded debt with them would be partial repu- 
diation. He, therefore, vetoed the Bill without 
any regard to the effect of the veto upon his 
personal or political fortunes, and although he 



100 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

knew perfectly well that his veto would be over- 
ridden. The Bill was passed over the veto, 
and we started on the downward course pre- 
dicted by President Hayes. Year by year, yea, 
month by month, the gold in the treasury was 
exhausted to buy silver bullion, to the enrich- 
ment of the silver kings of the Rockies, the com- 
mercial value of the silver dollars steadily de- 
chned as they piled higher and higher in the 
vaults of the treasury, and in fifteen years the 
crisis of 1893 came upon us. Then the whole 
country saw how high above all his colleagues 
and contemporaries President Hayes had stood 
in prescience and moral firmness. 

The Resumption Act still stood, however, by 
the unconquerable support given it by the 
President and Secretary Sherman. By rigid 
economy in governmental expenditure, and by 
borrowing gold through bond issues, the adminis- 
tration succeeded in accumulating enough gold 
in the treasury, despite the enforced silver pur- 
chases, to warrant the government in declaring 
on January 1, 1879, that it would pay coin for 
paper whenever presented. So soon as the hold- 
ers of government notes knew that they could 



PRESIDENT HAYES 101 

have coin for them on asking, they did not 
want it. More coin was offered the treasury 
for notes than was demanded from the treasury 
for notes. The President foresaw that this 
would be the result, and not wishing to have 
anything interfere with the operation of the Re- 
sumption Law, he had, in his annual message 
of December, 1878, recommended Congress to 
abstain from any financial legislation. By the 
close of the year 1879, however, resumption was 
so completely established, and business had so 
revived, that he could, without apprehension, 
request further legislation by Congress for im- 
proving the financial system. 

In his annual message of December 1, 1879, 
after having referred to the fact of resumption 
and the prosperity of the country in conse- 
quence of it, and to the fact that since the Bland- 
Allison silver coinage law had gone into effect 
and down to November 1, 1879, 45,000,850 silver 
dollars had been coined, of which only 12,700, 
344 had gone into circulation while 32,300,506 
still remained stacked up in the treasury, repre- 
senting just that much depletion of the gold re- 
serve and consequently just so much money 



102 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

withdrawn from circulation, he went on to say: 
"I would strongly urge upon Congress the im- 
portance of authorizing the Secretary of the 
Treasury to suspend the coinage of silver dollars 
upon the present legal ratio. The market value 
of the silver dollar being uniformly and largely 
less than the market value of the gold dollar, it 
is obviously impracticable to maintain them at 
par with each other if both are coined without 
limit. If the cheaper coin is forced into circu- 
lation, it will, if coined without limit, soon be- 
come the sole standard of value, and thus defeat 
the desired object, which is a currency of both 
gold and silver, which shall be of equivalent 
value, dollar for dollar, with the universally rec- 
ognized money of the world." The President 
saw clearly then that we could not keep a vol- 
ume of silver dollars, increasing by two millions 
of dollars a month, on a par with gold; that we 
should exhaust our gold to pay the mine owners 
for the silver bullion, and that we should soon 
be left on a monometallic basis of silver. He 
was in favor of coining all the silver money 
which could be maintained in circulation on a 
par with gold, but not a dollar more, and he 



PRESIDENT HAYES 103 

saw in the piling-up of the silver dollars in the 
treasury the unanswerable evidence that we had 
already gone too far. 

The President said further: "The retirement 
from circulation of United States notes, with 
the capacity of legal tender in private contracts, 
is a step to be taken in our progress towards a 
safe and stable currency, which should be ac- 
cepted as the policy and duty of the govern- 
ment and the interest and security of the peo- 
ple. It is my firm conviction that the issue of 
legal-tender paper money, based wholly upon 
the authority and credit of the government, 
except in extreme emergency, is without war- 
rant in the Constitution and a violation of 
sound financial principles." 

Had Congress heeded the advice of the Presi- 
dent and taken then the steps recommended by 
him, the finances of the country would have 
been placed upon a perfectly solid and endur- 
ing basis, and we should have been saved all the 
loss and trouble which we have since suffered 
upon that subject. 

The President waited anxiously another year 
for Congress to show some response to his ap- 



104 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

peal, but in vain. He knew, however, that he 
was right, and he had the courage of his convic- 
tions. Undauntedly he made a final effort in 
his last annual message to move Congress to 
complete the good work done by his adminis- 
tration in what we may call the financial re- 
construction of the Union. 

He said: "There are still in existence uncan- 
celled $346,681,016 of United States legal-ten- 
der notes. These notes were authorized as a 
war measure, made necessary by the exigencies 
of the conflict in which the United States was 
then engaged. The preservation of the nation's 
existence required, in the judgment of Congress, 
an issue of legal-tender paper money. That it 
served well the purpose for which it was then 
created is not questioned, but the employment 
of the notes as paper money indefinitely, after 
the accomplishment of the object for which 
they were provided, was not contemplated by 
the framers of the law under which they were 
issued. These notes long since became, like any 
other pecuniary obligation of the government, 
a debt to be paid, and when paid to be cancelled 
as a mere evidence of an indebtedness no longer 



PRESIDENT HAYES 105 

existing. I, therefore, repeat what was said in 
the annual message of last year, that the retire- 
ment from circulation of United States notes, 
with the capacity of legal tender in private 
contracts, is a step to be taken in our progress 
towards a safe and stable currency, which should 
be accepted as the policy and duty of the govern- 
ment and the interest and security of the peo- 
ple." 

Upon the silver question he said: "At the 
time of the passage of the act now in force re- 
quiring the coinage of silver dollars, fixing their 
value, and giving them legal-tender character, 
it was believed by many of the supporters of 
the measure that the silver dollar, which it 
authorized, would speedily become, under the 
operations of the law, of equivalent value with 
the gold dollar. There were other supporters 
of the Bill, who, while they doubted as to the 
probability of this result, nevertheless were 
willing to give the proposed experiment a fair 
trial, with a view to stop the coinage, if experi- 
ence should prove that the silver dollar author- 
ized by the Bill continued to be of less com- 
mercial value than the standard gold dollar. 



106 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

The coinage of silver dollars, under the act 
referred to, began in March, 1878, and has 
been continued as required by the act. The 
average rate per month to the present time has 
been $2,276,492. The total amount coined 
prior to the 1st of November last was $72,847,- 
750. Of this amount $47,084,450 remain in the 
treasury, and only $25,763,'^291 are in the hands 
of the people. A constant effort has been made 
to keep this currency in circulation, and con- 
siderable expense has been necessarily incurred 
for this purpose; but its return to the treasury 
is prompt and sure. Contrary to the confident 
anticipation of the friends of the measure at 
the time of its adoption, the value of the silver 
dollar, containing four hundred and twelve and 
one-half grains of silver, has not increased. 
During the year prior to the passage of the Bill 
authorizing its coinage, the market value of the 
silver which it contained was from ninety to 
ninety-two cents as compared with the stand- 
ard gold dollar. During the last year the aver- 
age market value of the silver dollar has been 
eighty-eight and a half cents. 

"It is obvious that the legislation of the last 



PRESIDENT HAYES 107 

Congress in regard to silver, so far as it was 
based upon an anticipated rise in the value of 
silver as a result of that legislation, has failed 
to produce the effect then predicted. The 
longer the law remains in force, requiring, as it 
does, the coinage of a nominal dollar which in 
reality is not a dollar, the greater becomes the 
danger that this country will be forced to ac- 
cept a single metal as the sole legal standard of 
value in circulation, and this a standard of less 
value than it purports to be worth in the recog- 
nized money of the world." The President 
then besought Congress to "repeal so much of 
existing legislation as required the coinage of 
silver dollars containing only four hundred and 
twelve and one-half grains of silver, and in its 
stead authorize the Secretary of the Treasury 
to coin silver dollars of equivalent value, as 
bullion, with gold dollars." 

But Congress still refused to listen to the 
voice of reason. The majority in both houses 
were Democrats, nearly all of whom were wedded 
to both the greenback and free-silver heresies, 
and many, nay most, of the Republicans were 
laboring under the same delusions. Even Sher- 



108 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

man was still undecided about the retirement 
of the greenbacks. President Hayes was, how- 
ever, entirely clear in his mind upon these sub- 
tle and complicated questions. He was wiser 
than any or all of his colleagues and contem- 
poraries in regard to them. Taught by bitter 
experience, we have taken one of the steps which 
the President recommended, viz.: the suspen- 
sion of the coinage of legal-tender silver dollars, 
but the other menace to our monetary system, 
the three hundred and forty-six millions of 
greenback currency, still remains, making our 
currency rigid instead of flexible, redundant at 
times when it should be curtailed, and insuffi- 
cient at times when it should be plentiful. 
Every sound financier knows that they ought 
to be retired, but the Congress and the voters 
are still not educated up to the adoption of 
such a measure. As to this. President Hayes 
still remains the prophet ahead of his time, but 
the true prophet whose time will surely come 
and whose teachings upon this subject also will 
surely prevail. 

I cannot, however, close this short account of 
President Hayes' great services to the financial 



PRESIDENT HAYES 109 

development of his country without referring 
briefly to the great success of his administra- 
tion in the refunding of the pubhc debt and the 
great saving, in interest payment, to the nation. 
During the first three years of his term a sav- 
ing of some fifteen milhon dollars per annum 
had been effected in this manner, and he and his 
able Secretary, Mr. Sherman, had matured a 
plan and proposed it to Congress, which in 
the last year of his term would have saved the 
country twelve million dollars more per annum. 
The Democratic Congress, however, loaded the 
proposed measure down with wild amendments 
which, Mr. Sherman said, would have made 
*'the execution of the law practically impossi- 
ble." 

Among these amendments was one which the 
President believed would prove most destruc- 
tive to the national banking system. Its effect 
would have been, as he thought, and rightly 
thought, to have concentrated the banking 
facilities in the relatively few large cities to the 
great disadvantage of the smaller cities and 
towns and the mass of the people, especially 
in the agricultural communities. Much as it 



110 PRESIDENT HAYES 

would have gratified him to have been able to 
say that the financial operations of his adminis- 
tration had saved the country, in the single 
matter of the refunding of the debt, over 
twenty-five millions of dollars in annual in- 
terest, instead of fifteen millions, he, never- 
theless, decided that he must forego the glory 
of this statement to do his country the greater, 
though to the people far less apparent, good of 
preserving the national banking system against 
monopolistic tendencies and later monopolistic 
development. He therefore vetoed the bill and 
thereby prevented its enactment into law. This 
was his last great service to the cause of sound 
public finance, and it manifested not only his 
deep insight into this intricate subject, but his 
singleness of purpose and his great power of 
dealing with everything touching his public 
duty entirely objectively, and without anyre- 
gard whatsoever to the effect of his decisions 
upon his personal or political fortunes or to 
the glory of success. 



LECTURE IV 

THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GOVERN- 
MENT UPON ITS CONSTITUTIONAL 
FOUNDATION 

THE Civil War had subordinated all de- 
partments of the government to the 
executive as the commander-in-chief of 
the armed forces, and the period of reconstruc- 
tion had carried the pendulum to the other end 
of the arc, and made the legislature supreme. 
It remained for President Hayes' administra- 
tion to restore the constitutional equilibrium of 
independent co-ordinate departments, each act- 
ing within its own constitutionally prescribed 
sphere and all co-operating in the constitution- 
ally prescribed manner. 

President Hayes' activities as directed to- 
ward this end may be distinguished under three 
categories. First, his doctrine as to the presi- 
dential term. Second, his opposition to parlia- 
mentary government as unconstitutional and 

111 



112 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

as irreconcilable with the principles of the 
Republic. Third, his reform of the civil service. 
First. It was President Hayes' firm behef 
that the admissibihty of a second term in the 
presidential office furnished temptations dan- 
gerous to, if not absolutely incompatible with, 
the most effective discharge of the duties of the 
great office. He was convinced that it was too 
severe a draft upon human nature to expect 
that any man under the temptation of securing 
a second term would not have his thoughts, 
time, and energies diverted, in a greater or less 
measure, from the discharge of his official duties 
to the work of bringing about his renomina- 
tion and his re-election. He also believed that 
the poHcies and official activities of a President 
under such a temptation would be, more or less, 
tainted with selfish considerations, which would 
blind his vision and demorahze his conscience. 
And, finally, he was clearly convinced that 
any reform in the official service, in middle and 
lower instance, could be secured only by eman- 
cipating the chief executive from any prospec- 
tive political obligations to these officials or 
anybody else. 



PRESIDENT HAYES 113 

We find, consequently, in Mr. Hayes' letter 
of acceptance of the nomination to the presi- 
dency by the national convention of the Re- 
publican party, his firm and unalterable decla- 
ration that he would not accept the nomination 
for a second term, and in his inaugural address 
the proposal that a constitutional amendment 
should be adopted forbidding a re-election to 
the presidential office and extending the single 
term from a period of four to a period of six 
years. Nearly forty years have now passed 
since President Hayes made this wise recom- 
mendation, and it is not yet realized. I have 
no doubt that it will be finally realized. I am 
almost encouraged to think that it is nearer re- 
alization now than ever before. Men were in- 
chned to regard it then as a far-fetched ideal 
for transcendentalists to amuse themselves with. 
Now it is taken seriously and is a plank in the 
platform of one of the great parties. Come to 
it we must, if we would have a President of the 
whole country, with all his thought, time, and 
energy devoted to his official work, and an of- 
ficial system capable, efficient, and incorrupt- 
ible. 



114 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Secondly, President Hayes' wise and cou- 
rageous struggle against the attempt to foist 
parliamentary government upon our country 
was much more immediately successful. The 
Constitution of the United States provides that 
all bills for the raising of revenue shall originate 
in the House of Representatives. Out of this 
power of the sole initiative of tax measures, the 
House of Representatives sought to develop a 
control of the entire budget, both of income and 
appropriation, such as that exercised by the 
British House of Commons, and then to use 
this power for forcing the consent of the Senate 
and the President to legislation contrary to 
their judgment and wishes. The course en- 
tered on by the House of Representatives for 
the attainment of this end was to tack the leg- 
islation, which it undertook to force through 
against the opposition of the Senate and the 
President, to the appropriation Bills for the 
support of the government, and hold up these 
until such legislation should be agreed to by 
them. It was not exactly a new thing at the 
time of the accession of Mr. Hayes to the presi- 
dency, but it had never before come to be so 



PRESIDENT HAYES 115 

manifestly a struggle between two systems of 
government, the parliamentary system and the 
check-and-balance system. The struggle be- 
gan in the session of Congress of the year 
1878-9. 

The Democrats had the majority in the 
House of Representatives, and the Republicans 
in the Senate. The Democrats from the South- 
ern States held the balance of power in their 
party. They were determined to abolish the 
acts of Congress relating to the disqualification 
of those who had taken part in the rebellion to 
act as jurors in the courts, and to the employ- 
ment of the army of the United States to keep 
the peace at the polls, and finally to the control 
of the national elections by national officials. 
The Democratic House attached provisions re- 
pealing these laws to several of the most im- 
portant appropriation Bills. The Republican 
Senate refused to pass the Bills with the riders, 
and the House refused to pass the Bills without 
them. The session closed on the 4th day of 
March, 1879, without having made any pro- 
vision for the support of the most important 
branches of the administration. 



116 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

President Hayes was, therefore, compelled to 
summon the new Congress, now Democratic in 
both houses, to extra session for the purpose of 
passing the appropriation bills. His message of 
summons was concise and to the point, and con- 
tained no argument in regard to the attitude of 
the late Congress, and no criticism upon it. 
It assumed that Congress would do its duty. 
It made a good impression upon the country, 
and the President started in with a fair field 
for the battle. The Congress passed, first, the 
appropriation Bill for the army, and tacked to 
it the repeal of the law authorizing the employ- 
ment of an armed force to keep the peace at 
the polls. The President sent his veto of this 
Bill to the House of Representatives on April 
29, 1879. The President objected to the pro- 
visions of the Bill against using an armed force 
to keep the peace at the polls, on the ground that 
it left the civil oflScers of the elections without 
protection in case of riot, and without physical 
power to enforce the laws. But his chief ob- 
jection to the whole Bill was that, by the tack- 
ing process, it undertook to force the executive 
into submission to the legislature in a way not 



PRESIDENT HAYES 117 

provided in the Constitution. His position was 
stated in the following words: 

"On the assembhng of this Congress, in pur- 
suance of a call for an extra session, which was 
made necessary by the failure of the Forty-fifth 
Congress to make the needful appropriations for 
the support of the government, the question was 
presented whether the attempt made in the last 
Congress to engraft by construction a new prin- 
ciple upon the Constitution should be persisted 
in or not. That principle is, that the House of 
Representatives has the sole right to originate 
bills for raising revenue and, therefore, has the 
right to withhold appropriations upon which the 
existence of the government may depend, unless 
the Senate and the President shall give their 
consent to any legislation which the House may 
see fit to attach to the appropriation Bills. To 
establish this principle is to make a radical, 
dangerous, and unconstitutional change in the 
character of our institutions. That a majority 
of the Senate now concurs in the claim of the 
House adds to the gravity of the situation, but 
does not alter the question at issue. The new 
doctrine, if maintained, will result in a consoli- 



118 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

dation of unchecked and despotic power in the 
House of Representatives. A bare majority 
of the House will become the government. 
The executive will no longer be, what the fram- 
ers of the Constitution intended, an equal and 
independent branch of the government. It is 
clearly the constitutional duty of the President 
to exercise his discretion and judgment upon 
all bills presented to him without constraint or 
duress from any other branch of the government. 
To say that a majority of either or both of the 
houses of Congress may insist on the approval 
of a bill under the penalty of stopping all of the 
operations of the government, for want of the 
necessary supplies, is to deny to the executive 
that share of the legislative power which is 
plainly conferred by the second section of the 
Seventh Article of the Constitution. It strikes 
from the Constitution the qualified negative of 
the President. It is said that this should be 
done because it is the peculiar function of the 
House of Representatives to represent the will 
of the people. But no single branch or depart- 
ment of the government has exclusive authority 
to speak for the American people. The most 



PRESIDENT HAYES 119 

authentic and solemn expression of their will 
is contained in the Constitution of the United 
States. By that Constitution they have or- 
dained and established a government whose 
powers are distributed among co-ordinate 
branches, which, as far as possible, consistently 
with a harmonious co-operation, are absolutely 
independent of each other. The people of this 
country are unwilling to see the supremacy of 
the Constitution replaced by the omnipotence 
of any department of the government. 

"The enactment of this Bill into a law will 
establish a precedent which will tend to de- 
stroy the equal independence of the several 
branches of the government. Its principle 
places not merely the Senate and the executive, 
but the judiciary also, under the coercive dic- 
tation of the House. The House alone will be 
the judge of what constitutes a grievance, and 
also of the means and measures of redress. 
An act of Congress to protect elections is now 
the grievance complained of. But the House 
may on the same principle determine that any 
other act of Congress, a treaty made by the 
President, with the advice and consent of the 



120 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

Senate, a nomination or appointment to oflfice, 
or that a decision or opinion of the Supreme 
Court is a grievance, and that the measure of 
redress is to withhold the appropriations re- 
quired for the support of the offending branch 
of the government. Beheving that this Bill is 
a dangerous violation of the spirit and mean- 
ing of the Constitution, I am compelled to re- 
turn it to the House in which it originated 
without my approval. The qualified negative 
with which the Constitution invests the Presi- 
dent is a trust that involves a duty which he 
cannot decline to perform. With a firm and 
conscientious purpose to do what I can to pre- 
serve unimpaired the constitutional powers and 
equal independence, not merely of the execu- 
tive, but of every branch of the government, 
which will be imperilled by the adoption of the 
principle of this Bill, I desire earnestly to urge 
upon the House of Representatives a return to 
the wise and wholesome usage of the earlier 
days of the Republic, which excluded from ap- 
propriation Bills all irrelevant legislation. By 
this course you will inaugurate an important 
reform in the method of Congressional legisla- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 121 

tion. Your action will be in harmony with the 
fundamental principles of the Constitution and 
the patriotic sentiment of nationality which is 
their firm support; and you will restore to the 
country that feeling of confidence and security 
and the repose which are so essential to the 
prosperity of all our fellow citizens." 

The houses of Congress were unable to pass 
the Bill over the veto, and they separated the 
two parts and passed the rider in a somewhat 
modified form which, however, failed under the 
veto of the President. Finally they passed the 
army appropriation Bill with a proviso that the 
army of the United States should not be used 
as a police force at the polls. As this was al- 
ready the law, the President allowed them to 
save their faces, in some measure, in this way, 
and signed the Bill. 

In the meanwhile the houses had tacked the 
repeal of the national election laws, under the 
form of such a modification of them as to make 
them almost incapable of enforcement, and of 
the juror's test oath, to the appropriation Bill 
for the support of the legislative, executive, and 
judicial departments of the government. After 



122 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the crushing veto of the army appropriation 
Bill, they separated the Bill for the support of 
the legislative, executive, and judicial depart- 
ments into two measures, the one an appropria- 
tion Bill for the legislative and executive depart- 
ments without any rider of any kind, and the 
other an appropriation Bill for the judicial de- 
partment, with riders abolishing the juror's test 
oath and forbidding the use of any of the ap- 
propriation for enforcing the existing national 
election laws. 

The President vetoed this latter Bill on like 
grounds to those contained in the veto of the 
army appropriation Bill, and the houses were 
unable to pass the Bill over his veto. They now 
divided this Bill into two parts, the one an ap- 
propriation Bill for the judicial department 
without any rider, but without any provision 
for the payment of the United States marshals 
and deputy-marshals, and the other an appro- 
priation Bill for the payment of these with the 
rider, forbidding the use of any of the appro- 
priation for the enforcement of the national 
election laws. The President signed the former 
and vetoed the latter. The Congressional session 



PRESIDENT HAYES 123 

closed without making any appropriation for 
the payment of the marshals and the deputy- 
marshals. Under exhortation and encourage- 
ment from the President, these kept on doing 
their duties patriotically without pay. At the 
next session, that of 1879-80, the houses passed 
an appropriation Bill for the payment of the 
marshals and deputy-marshals with a rider emas- 
culating that part of the existing law relating 
to the employment of special deputy -marshals. 
The President refused to have his consent to 
the rider, which he did not approve, forced by 
the tacking process and vetoed this Bill. The 
houses finally gave way entirely and passed 
the Bill without any rider. 

The President had won a double victory, and, 
in both parts, completely. He had vindicated 
the right and power of the national government 
to regulate by national law subjects made na- 
tional by the Constitution and to enforce such 
national law by national officials, and he had 
prevented the parliamentary system of govern- 
ment, the system of the sovereignty of the lower 
house of the legislature, the system which finally 
extinguishes all of the constitutional immunities 



124 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

of the individual, from displacing the check- 
and-balance system provided by the Constitu- 
tion for the purpose of maintaining and protect- 
ing those immunities. This alone would have 
been suflScient to have made President Hayes' 
administration immortal. His contemporaries 
recognized in some, though not in full, degree 
the value of the great service he had done the 
country. The President was not unduly elated 
by their approval. He knew perfectly the fick- 
leness of public opinion, and he had a fight on 
with the bosses of his party for the reform of the 
civil service which he knew well would strain 
the force of his favor with his party to the ut- 
most. He wrote in his diary: *'When The 
Tribune can say: *The President has the cour- 
tesy of a Chesterfield and the firmness of a 
Jackson,' I must be prepared for the reaction- 
ary counterblast." 

So soon as the President had settled the South- 
ern question by the withdrawal of the troops, 
he addressed himself to the great problem of 
improving the civil service. In the early days 
of the Republic, when the number of officials 
was relatively small, and before the European 



PRESIDENT HAYES 125 

idea of permanency of term had given way to 
the new American idea of a change of all offi- 
cers at the beginning of each new administra- 
tion, it was possible for the President and the 
heads of the departments to select from among 
their personal acquaintances proper incumbents 
for the civil service of the government. After 
these changes, however, began to have their ap- 
preciable and then their full effect, in the sixth 
and seventh decades of the last century, it be- 
came more and more manifest that this was no 
longer possible. Already in the year 1853 and 
1855 laws had been passed by Congress requir- 
ing examinations of candidates for office in the 
national civil service. The character of the 
examinations was not, however, fixed by these 
laws, and it soon became manifest that the ar- 
bitrariness and favoritism which had formerly 
characterized the appointments had only been 
transferred back to the determination of the 
admission to examination. 

By 1865, and with the great increase in the 
number of offices in the civil service, the griev- 
ance became a crying one, and in 1866 Mr. 
Jenckes, of Rhode Island, began the agitation for 



126 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

reform in the House of Representatives, and in 

1869 Mr. Schurz, in the Senate. This agitation 
continued during the next four years, and in 

1870 was increased and furthered by the rec- 
ommendations of President Grant in his annual 
message of that year. In this message Presi- 
dent Grant called the existing system of ap- 
pointment to the civil offices of the government 
an abuse, and asked that Congress immediately 
find the remedy for it. He said: "The present 
system does not secure the best men, not even 
fit men, for public place. The elevation and 
purification of the civil service of the govern- 
ment will be hailed with approval by the whole 
people of the United States." Under this pres- 
sure Congress passed the Act of March 3, 1871, 
vesting in the President the power to make 
rules and regulations for admission to the civil 
service of the government. 

The President immediately constituted a 
civil-service commission with Mr. George W. 
Curtis for its chairman. This commission 
adopted the principle of free competitive ex- 
aminations for admission to the civil service, 
admitting new men, through these, only to the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 127 

lowest grades in the service and promoting from 
the lower to the higher grades. The hostility 
of the spoilsmen of both of the great parties, 
and especially of the Repubhcan, as the ruling 
party, to the new system of non-partisan, busi- 
ness administration in the middle and lower 
offices quickly manifested itself. Congress re- 
fused to continue the appropriation for the 
commission, and President Grant let the matter 
drop. The improvement in the service had, 
however, been so evident that the country 
clamored for the continuance of the reform. 
The national conventions of both of the great 
parties in 1876 contained civil-service-reform 
planks in their platforms. 

If the writers of these planks intended them 
simply for political effect, and supposed that 
the newly to be elected President would ignore 
them at a sign from the party leaders, they 
greatly misread the character of Mr. Hayes. 
In his letter of acceptance, and in his inaugural 
address, he dwelt particularly upon this subject, 
and gave strong evidence of his earnestness and 
determination concerning it. He declared in 
his inaugural address that the reform must be 



128 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

"thorough, radical, and complete," and indicated 
what he meant by this, viz.: appointment on 
the ground of capacity alone; security of tenure 
on the ground of honesty and faithful perform- 
ance of duty; and freedom from any of the re- 
quirements of partisan service. It was in this 
connection that he used the famous sentence 
which has taken its place among American 
political maxims, and to which I have already 
referred: "He serves his party best who serves 
his country best." 

In the carrying out of this reform it was upon 
Mr. Schurz more than upon any other member 
of his Cabinet that President Hayes relied. Mr. 
Schurz was the idealist, with great historical 
knowledge and a wide, practical experience both 
in Europe and America. He had the indepen- 
dence of superior knowledge, and the strength 
and tenacity of absolute uprightness. Presi- 
dent Hayes knew well his great worth and gave 
him unreserved confidence. The President ap- 
pointed him with Mr. Evarts, at the very outset, 
as a committee of the Cabinet for formulating 
the regulations governing appointments. Evi- 
dently the President was determined to take the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 129 

matter of civil-service reform into his own hands 
and not wait for the action of Congress. Sec- 
retary Schurz immediately reformed his own 
department on the principles laid down in the 
President's inaugural address, and made it the 
model and the object-lesson for all the others 
and for the entire service. Everything super- 
fluous was done away with, all incompetent or 
unfaithful persons were dismissed, and honesty, 
capacity, efficiency, and fidelity to duty became 
the sole ground of appointment to, continuance 
in, and advancement in, office. All the de- 
partments at Washington quickly followed the 
example of the Department of the Interior, and 
a marked improvement was distinctly observed 
throughout all the offices at the national capital. 
The next step was to extend the reform from 
Washington throughout the country. The most 
important place in the whole country, outside 
of Washington, required it most pressingly, 
viz.: the New York custom house. Two- 
thirds of the customs revenue of the entire na- 
tion were collected there. Two-thirds of the 
imports of the entire nation passed through its 
gates. Here, therefore, was the greatest pos- 



130 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

sible opportunity for political favoritism, in- 
competency, fraud, and corruption. And this 
possible opportunity had been well improved. 
The place was filled with holders of sinecures, 
pot-house politicians, and incompetents. Graft 
abounded everywhere, from passing dutiable 
articles of personal baggage for a tip to under- 
valuing the imports made by New York City 
merchants who had sufficient political influence 
to bring it about. Secretary Sherman appointed 
an investigating committee with the venerable 
and upright John Jay as its chairman, who re- 
ported the most scandalous condition of affairs 
and recommended its speedy and radical cure. 
On the 26th of May, 1877, the President sent 
Secretary Sherman a written communication 
approving the recommendations of the com- 
mittee. He wrote: "It is my wish that the 
collection of the revenues shall be free from 
partisan control, and organized on a strictly 
business basis, with the same guarantees for effi- 
ciency and fidelity required by a prudent mer- 
chant. Party leaders should have no more in- 
fluence in appointments than other equally 
respectable citizens. No assessment for politi- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 131 

cal purposes on officers or subordinates should 
be allowed. No useless officer or employee 
should be retained. No officer should be re- 
quired or permitted to take part in the manage- 
ment of political organizations, caucuses, con- 
ventions, or election campaigns. Their right 
to vote, and to express their views on public 
questions, either orally or through the press, is 
not denied, provided it does not interfere with 
their official duties." 

Here was the whole system of civil-service 
reform in a nutshell. The RepubHcan pohti- 
cians were against it tooth and nail. They saw 
in it their loss of patronage, and they declared 
that to deny to the office-holders the leadership 
in the caucuses and conventions would disrupt 
the party and doom it to defeat. But the Presi- 
dent was neither frightened nor intimidated. 
On the 22d day of June, 1877, he caused a letter 
to be addressed to all civil officers of the govern- 
ment containing the following instructions: "No 
officer should be required or permitted to take 
part in the management of poHtical organiza- 
tions, caucuses, conventions, or election cam- 
paigns. The right to vote and to express their 



132 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

views on public questions, either orally or 
through the press, is not denied, provided it 
does not interfere with their official duties. No 
assessment for political purposes, on officers 
or subordinates, should be allowed. This rule 
is applicable to every department of the civil 
service. It should be understood by every 
officer of the general government that he is ex- 
pected to conform his conduct to its require- 
ments." 

The President thus threw down the gauge 
of battle to the spoilsmen everywhere. He 
pursued his course without wavering, but was 
able to execute his order only in part. His 
opponents pointed to the Republican defeats 
in the State elections in the autumn of 1877 as 
the fruit of his policy of denying to the officials 
the control of the party organization. He ad- 
mitted that the first effect of this policy was dis- 
organizing, but contended that this would be 
speedily followed by a better and purer organiza- 
tion, and he called upon Congress, in his message 
of December 3, 1877, to revive the civil-service 
commission, constituted by the law of March 
3, 1871, still in existence, by making a suitable 



PRESIDENT HAYES 133 

appropriation for its support. Pronunciamentos 
and recommendations would not, however, solve 
the question. The order of June 22d must be 
enforced, and enforced, first of all, against the 
highest offenders. These were the officers of 
the New York custom house, Mr. Chester A. 
Arthur, the collector, and Mr. Alonzo B. Cor- 
nell, the naval officer. These men openly de- 
fied the order and continued managing the 
conventions and caucuses of the Republican 
party. Mr. Cornell persisted in holding his 
place as the chairman of the Republican State 
committee of the State of New York. Presi- 
dent Hayes first asked these two men to resign 
their offices. They ignored his request and he 
nominated Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and 
Mr. L. Bradford Prince to take their places. 
At the same time he nominated Mr. Edwin A. 
Merritt to take the place of Mr. Sharpe, whose 
term as surveyor of the port had expired. As 
the Senate was in session these nominations went 
to it immediately for confirmation. Since Mr. 
Merritt's nomination was to a vacancy, the 
Senate confirmed it, but Senator Conkling and 
his spoilsmen colleagues were able, after a fierce 



134 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

and acrimonious debate, to reject the nomina- 
tions of Roosevelt and Prince, and keep Mr. 
Arthur and Mr. Cornell in their places. The 
President remained, however, undaunted by 
this defeat. He wrote in his memorandum of 
events: "I am right, and shall not give up the 
contest." He waited until the session of the 
Senate expired, and, it having daily become 
more manifest that the reforms could not be car- 
ried out in the New York custom house with 
Arthur and Cornell as collector and naval offi- 
cer, backed by Conkling and the spoilsmen, he 
suspended them from office and appointed Mr. 
Merritt, the surveyor of the port, to the collec- 
torship, and Mr. Silas W. Burt, the deputy naval 
officer, to the surveyorship. Of course, these 
names had, according to the existing Tenure of 
Office Acts, to be submitted to the Senate for 
confirmation upon the reassembly of the body, 
i. e., in December of 1878. So soon as this was 
done, the contest broke out anew and raged for 
nearly two months. At last the President, 
judging the moment opportune, sent a message 
to the Senate, enclosing a letter from the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury which exposed the scandals 



PRESIDENT HAYES 185 

of the custom house so thoroughly that many 
of the senators saw that the courtesy of the 
Senate for Mr. ConkHng could no longer with- 
stand the popular displeasure. On the 3d of 
February, 1879, the Senate confirmed the Presi- 
dent's nominations, and the great battle was 
won. 

The President now caused a code of rules to 
be formulated regulating appointments to, pro- 
motion in, and dismissal from, office in the civil 
service, divorcing the service entirely from poli- 
tics and basing it on ability, honesty, and effi- 
ciency, as determined impartially by competitive 
examinations and actual work. This code was 
framed primarily for the New York custom 
house and post-office, but it was put in opera- 
tion in all the great administrative offices 
throughout the country. 

It will be seen, however, that the civil-ser- 
vice reform as instituted by President Hayes 
was one founded on rules issued wholly by the 
Executive Department of the government, and 
put in practice by the officers in each depart- 
ment. In a monarchy, that is, in a government 
where the executive holds his office for life and 



136 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

by the tenure of hereditary right, such a reform 
may be, probably would be, permanent; but in 
a government where the executive is elected 
and holds for a short term of years, it is exposed 
to the risk of vicious modifications and even 
total abandonment. Naturally, therefore, Presi- 
dent Hayes sought to give his great work per- 
manence by appealing to Congress to put it on 
the foundation of organic statutes. 

In his annual message of December 1, 1879, 
he transmitted to Congress an elaborate re- 
port by Mr. D. B. Eaton, the chairman of the 
civil-service commission, who generously served 
without compensation in that capacity, urged 
Congress to co-operate with the executive in 
furthering the reform and in placing it upon the 
basis of Congressional statutes instead of execu- 
tive ordinances, and recommended a suitable 
appropriation for the support of the work of 
the civil-service commission in extending the 
reform throughout every branch of the admin- 
istrative service. Still Congress, composed now 
in both branches of Democrats in majority, 
would not heed him. He struggled on another 
year, doing everything in his power without 



PRESIDENT HAYES 137 

the support of statutory provisions and perma- 
nent laws. The service was improving all the 
time, however, and while he was subjected to 
fierce criticism from the spoilsmen, on the one 
side, whom he was depriving of patronage, and 
from the radical reformers on the other, for 
whom he did not advance fast enough, he never- 
theless built steadily the structure, which was 
never again completely demolished, and which 
is now at last fairly well established. 

In his final annual message, that of December 
6, 1880, he made a last vigorous appeal to Con- 
gress to give his great work the permanency of 
law. He told Congress that the stabiHty of the 
government was threatened by the dangers of 
patronage, i. e., of appointments upon recom- 
mendation by the members of Congress "for 
personal or partisan considerations," and that 
these dangers increased with "the enlargement 
of the administrative service and the growth of 
the country in population." He implored Con- 
gress to meet these dangers and dispel them by 
laws confirming and making universal the sys- 
tem of competitive examinations for appoint- 
ment, which he bad instituted, reUeving the 



138 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

members of Congress from "the demands made 
upon them by their constituents with reference 
to appointments to office, defining the relations 
of the members of Congress to the same, enabhng 
the officers of the government to safely refuse 
demands upon their salaries for political pur- 
poses, and making regular and sufficient appro- 
priation of funds for supporting and developing 
the work of the civil-service commission." He 
also begged Congress to repeal the vicious Ten- 
ure of Office Act of March 2, 1867, which had 
contributed so greatly to the demoralization of 
the civil service, in high instance, by giving the 
confidential advisers of the President a power 
over him, at the pleasure of the Senate, most 
destructive to the proper order of authority in 
the administration of the government. 

But Congress was as deaf as ever to his plea, 
and he left the great office three months later 
with the feeling that the great structure which 
he had reared rested only upon a foundation 
of sand. But it was not so. His work had been 
a great object-lesson to the American people, 
and it has never again been possible for any 
subsequent administration to ignore it. He had 



PRESIDENT HAYES 139 

builded better than he knew, and it was vouch- 
safed to him by a kind Providence to see that 
himself before he was gathered to his fathers. 

The settlement of the Southern question, the / 
resumption of specie payment, and the reform 
of governmental practice and service were the \ 
great achievements of the Hayes administra- 
tion, but other things were successfully accom- 
plished, always with the same sound judgment 
and in the same high tone. There were serious 
disturbances with Mexico attending the violent 
advent of Porfirio Diaz to the presidency of 
that turbulent people not at all unlike what 
has been taking place there during the last two 
or three years. Mr. Hayes was no more pleased 
with the way Diaz came to the presidency than 
was Mr. Wilson with the supposed or assumed 
complicity of Huerta in the killing of Madero, 
and there were the same violations of, and 
dangers to, American interests, and the same 
boundary infractions by Mexican marauders to 
be dealt with. But Mr. Hayes was a practical 
statesman, of refined manners, and he had at 
his council-table in the Department of Foreign 
Affairs a rather indifferent politician indeed, but 



140 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the best international lawyer in the country, 
and while the administration "waited watch- 
fully" for Diaz to re-establish order at the cen- 
tre, and threw nothing in the nature of ideal 
Democratic principles in his way, and extended 
no aid to his adversaries, it sent General Ord 
and the soldiers to the Rio Grande and in- 
structed him to protect our boundary and, if 
necessary, to pursue those infracting it into 
Mexico and punish them and recapture stolen 
property, with the result that Diaz became firmly 
established and universally commanding, and to 
Mexico was vouchsafed thirty-five years of such 
peace and prosperity as it had never before en- 
joyed and, I fear, never will again. 

The policy of the President in the Chinese 
question was no less wise, just, firm, and suc- 
cessful. The Pacific coast was roused to a frenzy 
of excitement over the influx of the quiet, in- 
dustrious Chinese laborers, and demanded the 
instant abrogation, by Congressional act, of our 
treaty with China allowing the free ingress of 
the subjects of each country to the other. Con- 
gress, under the influence of political pressure, 
passed the act abrogating the treaty, but the 



PRESIDENT HAYES 141 

President vetoed it on the ground that, except 
under dire necessity, which did not then exist, 
it would be a violation of international good 
faith, and the houses were unable to repass it 
in sufficient majority to overcome the veto. 
The President then took the matter up diplo- 
matically with the Chinese government and 
secured by mutual agreement the desired relief. 

It was during President Hayes' administra- 
tion also that the French Republic undertook, 
through nominally private enterprise, to get 
hold of the construction and control of the con- 
nection by canal of the Atlantic and Pacific 
Oceans through the Isthmus of Panama, and it 
was President Hayes who, first of American 
Presidents, formulated the policy of the United 
States in regard to such a waterway. In a 
special message of March 8, 1880, the President 
declared : 

"The policy of this country is a canal under 
American control. The United States cannot 
consent to the surrender of this control to any 
European power or to any combination of Euro- 
pean powers. If existing treaties between the 
United States and other nations, or if the rights 



142 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

of sovereignty or property of other nations, 
stand in the way of this poHcy — a con- 
tingency which is not apprehended — suitable 
steps should be taken by just and liberal ne- 
gotiations to promote and establish the Ameri- 
can policy on this subject, consistently with the 
rights of the nations to be affected by it." 

President Hayes did not live to see the prin- 
ciple which he formulated regarding the Panama 
Canal realized, but I venture to say that had 
he been in the presidential chair when the time 
was ripe for it, he would have acted with no 
less decision and effectiveness, though perhaps 
with more impeccable diplomacy, than his suc- 
cessor in office did. 

Returning again from the foreign to the do- 
mestic field, we must not overlook the great fact 
that President Hayes' administration found 
the key to the solution of our long- vexing Indian 
problem, and advanced that solution many 
stages towards completion. To his brilliant 
Secretary of the Interior, the statesman with a 
conscience and an ideal. President Hayes him- 
self was accustomed to ascribe the success of 
his administration in the handling of the Indian 



PRESIDENT HAYES 143 

problem. But we must remember that it was 
President Hayes' sound judgment of men that 
brought Mr. Schurz into his Cabinet against 
great opposition by the leaders of the Repub- 
lican party. What Mr. Schurz did also was 
done with President Hayes' approval and sup- 
port, and, therefore, while still attributing to 
Mr. Schurz the initiative in this great work, 
we must consider it one of the great achieve- 
ments of President Hayes' administration. 

The elements of the Indian policy were simple 
as all great things are simple. They were, first, 
the education of the Indians in schools apart 
from their tribes, and in the practical things 
of civilized life. Promising boys and girls, judi- 
ciously selected, were sent to the Hampton In- 
stitute. The cavalry barracks at Carlisle were 
assigned to Mr. Schurz' s department for a school 
entirely for the Indians, and another school 
for them was established at Forest Grove, 
in the State of Oregon. In the second place, 
the allotment to individuals of small farms in 
complete separate ownership, under the limita- 
tion that they could not, for a term of years, be 
disposed of by their owners. In the third place, 



144 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

the sale of the remaining lands of the reserva- 
tions to white settlers and the devotion of the 
proceeds to the Indian fund for their benefit 
and support. And in the fourth place, the 
training of the Indians to keep order among 
themselves by the organization of an Indian 
police force officered by whites. 

So rapid was the progress of the Indians under 
this policy that President Hayes had the great 
satisfaction of writing in his last annual message : 
"It gives me great pleasure to say that our 
Indian affairs appear to be in a more hopeful 
condition now than ever before. The Indians 
have made gratifying progress in agriculture, 
herding, and mechanical pursuits. Many who 
were a few years ago in hostile conflict with the 
government are quietly settling down on farms, 
where they hope to make their permanent 
homes, building houses and engaging in the oc- 
cupations of civilized life. The organization of 
a police force of Indians has been equally suc- 
cessful in maintaining law and order upon the 
reservations, and in exercising a wholesome 
moral influence upon the Indians themselves." 

We of to-day, the fortunate heirs of the re- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 145 

suits of this wise policy, know that we have 
now no longer a dangerous Indian problem, and 
we dare not forget to whom we owe our success 
in preserving to civilization the remnants of a 
once powerful race, a race which yielded to us 
the possession of the continent. 

Such was, in outhne, barest outline, the ad- 
ministration of Rutherford B. Hayes as the 
nineteenth President of the United States. It 
is a topic upon which volumes could be easily 
written, but when we say, in a single paragraph, 
that when he left the presidential office the coun- 
try enjoyed profound peace and friendship with 
every country of the world, that every great in- 
ternal problem — the Southern problem, the cur- 
rency problem, the civil-service problem, and 
the Indian problem — had been solved or put 
upon the right course of solution, that the whole 
country was prosperous and happy, and that 
his party had been restored to power in all 
branches of the government, we certainly shall 
have presented proof undeniable of the high suc- 
cess of Mr. Hayes' administration; and when 
we compare the situation at the end of it with 
the situation of chaos, confusion, and bad tem- 



146 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

per reigning everywhere and at all points in 
the beginning of it, we must conclude that no 
wiser, sounder, and more successful presidential 
period has ever been experienced by this coun- 
try. If Kenyon College had never done any- 
thing more for the country and the world than 
to start Rutherford B. Hayes on the course of 
his higher education, it would still have vindi- 
cated its title to existence and perpetuation 
and to the respect and veneration of the nation 
which he served and honored in the highest 
capacity which can fall to the lot of man. 

In estimating the great services of President 
Hayes to his country, there is, however, one 
more very important factor to be taken into 
the account, and I cannot regard this series of 
lectures upon the administration of President 
Hayes as complete without a few words upon 
the administration of Mrs. Hayes. When Mrs. 
Hayes went to Washington as "the first lady 
of the land," the society of the capital and of 
the official circles had reached almost the limit 
of vulgarity, ostentation, extravagance, and, in 
many cases, debauchery. Much of the official 
corruption which then prevailed has been ac- 



PRESIDENT HAYES 147 

counted for by the pressure which the men 
found themselves under in order to provide dress 
and entertainment for the women. Smoking, 
drinking, gambhng prevailed everywhere. And 
it is not too severe to say that common taste 
and bad manners were to be met with in the 
White House itself. With the advent of Mrs. 
Hayes as its mistress, everything was changed, 
changed radically and in the twinkling of an 
eye. Simplicity, modesty, refinement, unfailing 
courtesy, incomparable tact, genuine cordiality, 
temperate living, and high thinking took the 
place of qualities which patriotism forbids me 
from properly designating. The very highest 
type of genuine Americanism, of the genuine 
American family life, had now, most fortunately 
for the country and at the most necessary mo- 
ment, become the model in highest place for 
the imitation of the nation. The influence of 
it was felt immediately through the oflScial cir- 
cles, through the society of the capital, and 
gradually through the entire land. There was 
some ill-natured criticism on the absence of 
wines and alcoholic beverages from the White 
House entertainments, but Mrs. Hayes' one 



148 THE ADMINISTRATION OF 

experience with them at the banquet given in 
the second month of her Washington hfe to a 
couple of Russian grand dukes was enough to 
determine her unalterably to banish them from 
her table. Her entertainments were generous 
and very frequent, and she kept the mansion 
full of house-parties, while literary, musical, 
and artistic functions were preferred above all 
others. In a word, the White House became, 
under the administration of Mrs. Hayes, a seat 
of finest culture for the refinement of the soci- 
ety of the capital and the country. Since her 
day and after her example Washington society 
has never dropped back again to the low level 
of 1876. 

But Mrs. Hayes' administration went much 
further than the social regeneration of the cap- 
ital, and through it, in some degree at least, of 
the country. She possessed two qualities which 
strengthened the character of the President 
mightily and sustained him powerfully in his 
work. The one was her passion, I might almost 
say, for aiding others and making others happy, 
and the unconsciousness of self which is always 
the accompaniment of this high virtue. This 



PRESIDENT HAYES 149 

more than anything else was the secret of her 
personal fascination, and it elevated the spirit 
and character of every human being with whom 
she came in contact. What an ennobling in- 
fluence it must have had upon the mind and 
heart of the man who was privileged to live with 
her in perfect accord for so many years ! The 
President said of her after her departure had 
left him desolate: "I think of her as the golden 
rule incarnate." It is impossible to calculate 
the value of such a woman, as life companion, 
to a man in any station, so much more in high 
station, and so much more still in the highest 
station. The friends and supporters which, by 
this quality, she drew to the President were in- 
numerable; but more than all this it was the 
influence exerted upon the development and re- 
finement of his own character which must be 
reckoned as of supreme importance. 

The second quality was her absolute faith and 
confidence in her husband, in his abihty, his 
truthfulness, his conscientiousness, his integ- 
rity, his singleness of purpose, and his loyalty. 
Misunderstood, criticised, abused, and maligned, 
he could always turn to her, not for blind de- 



150 PRESIDENT HAYES 

votion, but for intelligent appreciation, wise 
counsel, friendly advice, and for complete un- 
derstanding of his purposes. There is no force 
under heaven so calculated to put clearness and 
correctness into a man's judgment, courage into 
his heart, and rectitude into his motives as such 
faith and confidence on the part of a pure, noble, 
intelligent, whole-hearted, and unselfish woman, 
for whose truthfulness of mind and character 
his respect knows no limits. Under such an 
influence it is no wonder that the personal and 
family life of President Hayes was impeccable, 
and his political life incorruptible. It would 
have put lofty ideals and exalted purposes into 
a man of far less original virtue than was Presi- 
dent Hayes' heritage. As it was, and taken all 
in all, the historian can say conscientiously and 
without exaggeration, that the finest examples 
of genuine American manhood and womanhood 
who ever occupied the White House of the na- 
tion were Rutherford Birchard and Lucy Webb 
Hayes. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Appointment to federal office, 16. 
Appropriation bills, 115, 122. 
Army Appropriation Bill, 10. 
Arthur, Chester A., 133. 

Blaine, James G., 30, 58, 64, 87. 
Bland Bill, 28, 98, 101, 105. 
Bristow, Secretary, 31. 

Cabinet, 58, 66. 

Canvassing boards. State, 41, 47, 

48, 72. 
Certification of electors, 40. 
Chamberlain, Governor, 73, 77. 
Character of Hayes, 32, 150. 
Chinese question, 140. 
Civil Service Commission, 20, 126, 

132. 
Civil Service Reform, 125, 131. 
Coinage history, 25. 
Coinage of silver, 27, 92, 95, 106, 
Commission to Louisiana, 82. 
Congressional plan, 4, 8. 
Conkling, Roscoe, 30, 58, 133, 135. 
Cornell, Alonzo B., 133. 
Corruption in civil service, 18. 
Counting of electoral votes, 42. 
Cronin, elector, 53. 
Currency question, 91. 
Curtis, George W., 126. 



Election law, 37. 

Electoral Commission, 44, 49, 52, 

54. 
Evarts, William M., 59, 128. 

Federal patronage under Grant, 15. 
Financial question, 90. 
Fish, Secretary, 30. 
Florida, 7, 39, 47, 49, 71. 
Free coinage of silver, 27. 

Governor's certificate of election, 

41. 
Grant, President U. S., 14, 19, 29, 

126. 
Greenback currency, 24. 
Greenback question, 103, 108. 
Grover, Governor, 52. 

Hampton, Wade, 73, 78. 
Hartranft, Governor, 32. 
Hayes, Mrs., 2, 56, 146. 

Inaugural address, 57. 
Indian problem, 142. 

Johnson, President Andrew, 9, 13. 
Johnston, General, 63. 
Joint rule of Congress, 43. 



Davis, Justice David, 46. 
Devens, Judge Charles, 64. 
Diaz, Porfirio, 139. 



Kenyon College, 1, 36, 146. 
Key, David M., 63, 66. 
Ku-Klux Klan, 6. 



163 



154 



INDEX 



Legal tender, 24. 
Lincoln-Johnson plan, 3. 
Louisiana, 7, 39, 47, 50, 72, 73, 82. 

McCrary, George W., 65. 

McCuUoch, Secretary Hugh, 23. 

Messages: Annual, 1877,93; 1879, 
101, 13G; 1880, 104, 137, 144; on 
Panama Canal, 141; on Rela- 
tion of Departments, 117; on 
Resumption, 93. 

Mexico, 139. 

Military rule, 7. 

Morton, Oliver P., 31, 64. 

National banking system, 109. 
New York custom house, 129. 
Nichols, Governor Francis T., 73, 
82. 

Oregon, 39, 48, 52. 

Packard, Governor, 73, 82. 
Panama Canal, 141. 
Panic of '73, 90. 
Parliamentary system, 114, 117, 

123. 
Prince, L. Bradford, 133. 

Reconstruction: Congressional 

plan, 4, 8; Lincoln-Johnson plan, 

3; military rule, 7. 
Refunding public debt, 109. 
Relation of departments, 114. 
Report of Louisiana Commission, 

83. 
Republican Convention of 1876, 

35. 



Resumption of specie payments, 

28, 91, 101. 
Riders to appropriations, 115, 121. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, Sr., 133. 
Rules for Civil Service, 135. 

Schurz, Carl, 61, 126, 128, 143. 
Selection of electors, 38. 
Senate action on Cabinet, 66. 
Sherman, John, 60, 67, 100, 109, 

130. 
Silver Bill, 92, 97. 
Single term, 112. 
South Carolina, 7, 39, 47, 49, 72, 

73, 77. 

Southern question, settlement of, 

74, 89. 
Speculation, 22. 
Stalwarts, 68, 71, 75, 88. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 12. 

State power over Federal elections, 

38. 
Stearns, Governor, 47. 
Siunmary of administration, 145. 

Tenure of Offoe Act, 9, 12, 138. 
Term of President, 112. 
Thompson, Colonel Richard W., 

64. 
Tilden, Samuel J., 47, 48, 50. 
Tribune, The New York, 124. 
Twenty-second Joint Rule, 43. 

U. S. Notes, 103, 108. 

Vetoes, 99, 110, 116, 120, 122, 141. 

Watts, Republican elector, 52. 
Wheeler, W. H., 32. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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